Mandelblog
Has The Candidate You Just Hired Stopped Looking?
Your hiring decision may be over. Theirs isn't.
Wordcount: 555 Time to read: 3½ minutes
Most organizations assume the hiring process ends when a candidate accepts an offer.
Every Bad Hire Was Once Someone's Best Candidate
Every hiring result begins with a hiring decision
Wordcount: 594 Time to read: 3½ minutes
The greatest danger in hiring isn't choosing the wrong candidate.
Stop Telling Candidates What You Want
The right people are ignoring your message
Wordcount: 492 Time to read: 2½ minutes
COVID changed how candidates look at jobs, work, and employers. The rise of AI added yet another layer. Together, they’ve changed how people think about the future of their work, the importance of their roles, and whether any opportunity today will matter tomorrow.
The People You Need Don’t Need You
The people you need need a reason to care
Wordcount: 718 Time to read: 4 minutes
If your recruiting message sounds like every other job offer, the right people won’t pay much attention. COVID and AI changed how people evaluate work and many employers are still recruiting as if nothing happened. This post explains why staffing problems often begin when recruiting becomes a transaction, and how to avoid it.
Your Customers Know What Your Employees Won’t Say
Wordcount: 722 Time to read: 4 minutes
Your customers feel the cracks your people won’t tell you about. Employees see the problems first and stay silent, which can be deadly. This post shows you how to uncover the truth before it kills your business.
Your Business Can’t Afford to Wait for Washington
Wordcount: 584 Time to read: 3 minutes
Today, the greatest risks to your business don’t come from Washington. They come from the unaddressed gaps within your own walls: gaps that are highlighted when customers engage with your organization.
Racing Ahead and Leaving Ideas Behind
Wordcount: 542 Time to read: 3½ minutes
It’s not about physical space, it’s about emotional and intellectual space. When time is short, it’s easy to push too hard and make people shut down. Thinking is hard work and takes time. Remember to allow space for people to think and process.
Do We Need to Hire Ourselves?
Wordcount: 575 Time to read: 3½ minutes
It’s bad enough when an organization can’t take care of its own operational and maintenance needs. It’s much worse when improving those activities are the very products and services being offered to its customers.
Engagement for Dummies: What, Why, How
Wordcount: 647 Time to read: 3½ minutes
Lots of people have lots of ideas about what employee engagement is. I know it's not about being productive or having an emotional attachment to the company. Engagement is often an ambiguous term. I passionately believe the most valuable asset any company has is its employees. Engagement is about making their work joyful.
Women are better leaders
Wordcount: 479 Time to read: 3 minutes
If leadership is about emotional intelligence, decision-making, and managing people, then women have the edge.
Objective Risk Assessment & The Future
Wordcount: 325 Time to read: 2 minutes
Leaders often overlook the assumptions hiding within their organizations, which can create hidden risks. Challenging these assumptions is key to better decision-making and leadership. Use risk scoring and mitigation strategies to address them before they become problems.
The Second Operational Imperative
Wordcount: 592 Time to read: 4 minutes
Long-term organizational success and sustainability require leadership’s dedication to three operational imperatives. In this post, I explain consistency of performance, the second operational imperative, and why it's at the root of the highest, most perfect form of promotion, marketing and attracting new clients.
When marketing just don't work
Wordcount: 542 Time to read: 4 minutes
When I say sometimes marketing doesn't work, I mean it doesn't work when you think you know your customer better than they know themselves. This is not an existential issue, nor is it an issue of conscious or subconscious awareness.
Customer Service Quality? Shmality!
Wordcount: 580 Time to read: 4 minutes
When it comes to delivering products and services, consistent levels of customer service outweigh all other aspects of the end-user experience. What makes a business stand out is outstanding customer service.
While there are many pieces to this puzzle, this newsletter focuses on three that are universal and foundational to building a sustainable organization.
Who Empties the Trash?
Wordcount: 697 Time to read: 4½ minutes
Daily operations often demand more time than there is, and routine can be comforting. Over time, and without thought, the familiarity of routine breeds complacency that inevitably leads to costly bad habits and crippling assumptions.
Are you concerned about where your organization may be wasting resources? Do you know your organization’s areas of weakness?
Whadddaya mean there's no spare tire!
Wordcount: 613 Time to read: 5 minutes
“Planning is an unnatural process; it is much more fun to do something. The nicest thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise, rather than being preceded by a period of worry and depression.”
— Sir John Harvey Jones
Struggling to survive in a world of constant change
Wordcount: 415 Time to read: 3 minutes
Businesses want predictability and dependability, i.e., no change, while the world is constantly changing. This creates friction. Learning how to manage the environment and maintain a sufficient degree of stability is an art most haven’t perfected, much less realizing any need to try. Here, Mandelberg talks about how to do just that.
Social Media: OK, so I was wrong ... again?
Wordcount: 621 Time to read: 3½ minutes
OK, so I was wrong. Social media can work. As Charlie Brown would say, AAUGH!
I’ve used social media grudgingly, expecting nothing, only to recently find proof of value. When a referral said they’d listened to my podcasts, I knew I was screwed–it can work. Those podcasts launched our client/vendor relationship.
Can your staff read your mind?
Wordcount: 385 Time to read: 2½ minutes
In the ever-shifting landscape of modern business, having a clear sense of direction isn't just an advantage—it's a necessity. If you know what you want your organization’s present and future to look like, don’t make staff read your mind. Document it.
Authentic Feedback
Wordcount: 760 Time to read: 4½ minutes
Getting honest feedback from staff is one of the most common complaints I hear from my ‘leader’ colleagues. The problem is rooted in the reality that penalty-free environments rarely exist. Is it possible to create a penalty free environment in a business where the questioner is the boss (or someone who has control over the career of the individual being questioned)? No. Is it realistic to even try to create one? Yes.
Using purpose to combat cost-push inflation
Wordcount: 368, Time to read: 2 minutes
This post contains important information about cost-push inflation and ways to improve recruitment efforts. It also includes a special section where I talk about three dumb-assed words - a must read!
We need staff!
Wordcount: 833 Time to read: 4½ minutes
Tired of looking for staff and finding ten “maybe” candidates for every “WOW” candidate? According to Einstein, doing the same thing and expecting different results is the definition of insanity. If you want to get consistently better candidates (different results), you have to try something different. In this issue, Larry offers three concrete ideas.
Leadership is ... ???
Wordcount: 498, Time to read: 3 minutes
The debate over what makes a good leader serves no purpose and has no value. The right questions are, what are the attributes of the best leaders, which apply to my role as a leader, and how do I develop the ones I don't have. For some answers and guidance, please read more.
Confidentiality [CONFIDENTIAL!]
Wordcount: 723, Time to read: 4 minute
According to Martin Uzochukwu Ugwu, “Confidentiality is a delicate bargain of trust.”
Are you waiting for trouble?
Wordcount: 428, Time to read: 3 minutes
A business satisfied with its success that stops trying to improve screams "We're patiently waiting to be overtaken." and signals the competition to attack. Why would any business do that? Sadly, that's what most do. When times are good, a business has the time, money, and resources to work on areas of weakness and look for ways to maintain its dominance. That's when proactive changes should be made, not when times are tough and you have no choice. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
The client who fired me
Wordcount: 668, Time to read: 3½ minutes
Sometimes the cost of not planning is negligible. Sometimes it's expensive. The ease and speed with which a lack of planning can become fatal is almost impossible to grasp or prepare for. When it happens, game over.
In Defense of Disruption
Wordcount: 810, Time to read: 4 minutes
Over the years, I’ve had the unfortunate opportunity to watch too many large and small organizations at the top of their game suffer. When they side-stepped disruption, they were outflanked by competition free from tradition or routine. Avoiding disruption for the sake of routine or tradition can be poisonous.
The Big P
Wordcount: 685, Time to read: 3½ minutes
Purpose, not Pandemic
“Can a business have a mind, a sub-conscious, a knack for predicting the future, reflexes faster than the speed of thought? Can a business have a spirit? Can a business have a soul? Can a business be alive?”
Everybody Loves Change (whether they know it or not)
Wordcount: 563 Time to read: 3½ minutes
Everybody loves the change they do unto others. Nobody likes the change others do unto them. Learn how to flip that script and make a welcome guest in your organization.
You Don’t Know Your Customer
Wordcount: 599 Time to read: 3 minutes
When you begin to believe you understand your customers needs is when you begin to lose sight of who your customer is. The demands on your customers that create change in their world can be completely hidden from yours. Ensuring you fully understand what drives your customers, over time, helps ensure you know who they really are.
Business Schools Don't Teach You How To Run A Business
Wordcount: 844 Time to read: 5 minutes
The first time every new leader takes charge, they quickly realize how ill-prepared their education left them. As humorously depicted in the Rodney Dangerfield film, Back To School, running a business ain't as simple as it might seem. This installment talks about the pitfalls and provides some useful tips.
Profit Without Purpose Is Pointless
Wordcount: 480 Time to read: 2½ minutes
For any strategic objective to have a chance at success, the organization must have some sense of purpose. The founders of Microsoft (Gates), Virgin (Branson), Amazon (Bezos), and Tesla (Musk) built game-changing companies driven by like-minded people working together to fulfill a shared purpose. At the end of the day, without purpose, we live for today and tomorrow loses all promise.
When Strategic Plans Fail
Wordcount: 623 Time to read: 3½ minutes
As a consultant with expertise in strategic planning, I get called to help clients for one of two reasons. They’re either trying to develop their first strategic plan or tired of having them fail. For either scenario, the reasons a strategic plan, or to be more specific, a strategic objective, fails are the same.
Hidden Recruiting Benefits of Business Values
Wordcount: 391 Time to read: 2 minutes
Values are the bricks and like-mindedness is the mortar of organizational culture. When you and I have common values, we automatically have common ground. Common ground is where we can respect one another and find enjoyment working together. Enjoyment creates an emotional draw that attracts people.
Nobody Knows Anything
Wordcount: 578 Time to read: 3 minutes
Nobody knows which ideas will succeed until one does. Success stories are often written off as bad ideas that won’t work by the experts before they’ve been tried or tested. How do you answer the question “How will COVID affect my business?”
You Don’t Know Why You’re In Business
Wordcount: 309 Time to read: 2 minutes
The question of why a business exists has many answers based on the interests and desires of leadership and those involved in the funding of the organization. Nonetheless, there is one universal truth about business purpose, a.k.a. why a business exists. Read this short blog post for the answer and let me know what you think. Enlightening or stupid? Either way, enjoy.
The Holy Grail of Business
Wordcount: 524 Time to read: 3 minutes
Do you want the successful organization you’ve built to survive when you and your leadership team are gone? Then you're looking for the Holy Grail of business too. Read this post to find out how to create sustainable, profitable growth with generational sustainability.
How To Avoid Business Suicide–part 4a
Wordcount: 554 Time to read: 3½ minutes
There are big business tactics small businesses will never be able to use. That's not true for one of the most powerful. Small businesses tend to let themselves be overwhelmed by the urgent, failing to anticipate, plan, and prepare for the inevitable changes they will face if they survive and succeed.
How Communication Can Cause Conflict
Wordcount: 535 Time to read: ~3 minutes
According to George Bernard Shaw, “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”
The Optimist, The Pessimist, and The Engineer
Wordcount: 543, Time to read: ~3 minutes
If an optimist sees a glass half full…
In business, most choices are clouded in grey while decisions are often reinforced by perspective. Don’t let your perspective obscure others and become your jail. Always be open to different ways of thinking.
Businesses Don’t Fail, Leaders Do
Wordcount: 814, Time to read: 4 minutes
On New Year’s Day, 2021, CNN Senior Political Analyst John Avlon began a segment with “The pandemic touched every part of the economy in 2020.” What I heard in my head was every part of the economy suffered in 2020 because of the Pandemic.
What Next? What Now?
Wordcount: 622 Time to read: 3 minutes
This July 2020 issue of my newsletter has proven to be unusually difficult to write. Perhaps it’s the moment in time, perhaps the ubiquity of change, perhaps one of other innumerable distractions. I suspect it’s linked to my unfamiliar inability to comprehend what the future holds.
The Great Pause
Wordcount: 525 Time to read: 3 minutes
“Our experiences always teach us something. If the experience is "bad", then the lesson is even more powerful and meaningful. Every unfortunate incident makes us stronger and better equipped to handle new challenges.”
Change Is A State Of Mind
Wordcount: 522 Time to read: 4 minutes
Life will only change when you become more committed to your dreams than you are to your comfort zone.
Billy Cox
The Pandemic Induced Economic
Wordcount: 525 Time to read: 3 minutes
If anybody has too much time these days, they're just not paying attention.
Can You Lead Without A Vision?
Wordcount: 427, Time to read: 3 minutes
As Yogi Bera once said, “If you don't know where you are going, you'll end up someplace else.”
Symptoms Masquerading as Issues
Wordcount: 457, Time to read: 3 minutes
One of the pitfalls of success… Symptoms masquerading as issues are one of the pitfalls of success.
The Problem With Being At The Top Of Your Game
Wordcount: 457, Time to read: 3 minutes
“The conquerors rode in a triumphal chariot, … A slave stood behind the conqueror holding a golden crown and whispering in his ear a warning: that all glory is fleeting.”
Read the full post...
5 Simple Change Rules the Pros Use To Put People In A Good Mood
Wordcount: 457, Time to read: 3 minutes
Using “change” and “good mood” in a title makes most people’s eyes roll. “Nobody likes change” is the common cry. Even though some people like some change, change is tough and disruptive. It takes work and effort.
Culture by Design
Wordcount: 457, Time to read: 3 minutes
When babies are born, they come complete with their own set of fingers, toes, and, to their parents’ joy & frustration, their very own personality. So too, from the moment of conception, each business has its own culture.
(Part 1 of 3)
Read the full post...
7 Ways Business Values Create Profits
Wordcount: 450, Time to read: 3 minutes
The biggest problem I see with business values is when leadership puts them on a poster and ignores them.
(Part 2 of 3)
Implementing Business Values
Wordcount: 350, Time to read: 2 minutes
Reaping the benefits described in last month’s newsletter depends on your business’ values being respected, embraced, followed, and modeled by leadership and staff. Before values can impact culture, they must first be used consciously, consistently, and proactively. Your value statements must be embedded in everyone’s mind.
(Part 3 of 3)
Read the full post...
Foresight & Lemons of Change
Wordcount: 144, Time to read: 2 minutes
Turning the lemons of change into lemonade begins with foresight. Some of the best paths to foresight run right through the delegation process, which is profoundly invested in and nourishing it.
When An Elephant Is In The Room
Wordcount: 378, Time to read: 3 minutes
Have you ever had to confront an elephant in the room? You know exactly what the phrase means–there is a problem several people know about and no one wants to discuss. In business, these elephants can bring even the mightiest organization to a grinding halt.
Read the full post...
Leadership & Pressure to Perform
Wordcount: 675, Time to read: 5 minutes
Leaders face subtle yet profound pressures, unseen and unfamiliar to most. They’re expected to solve problems their organizations have never faced, do so swiftly, with confidence, and little impact or cost.
Awareness
Wordcount: 187, Time to read: 2 minutes
When it comes to change, the negative is exactly where most people tend to focus unless you help them focus on something else. Actively directing their focus is exactly the job of leadership.
Profits or Purpose
Wordcount: 147, Time to read: 1 minute
A common perception is that a business exists to make money. While profits are critical to maintaining operations and delivering value to customers and investors, they are only one indicator of success. In my experience, profit without purpose is pointless and unsustainable.
Value of Failure
Wordcount: 302, Time to read: 2 minutes
Sam Walton once stated that his ability to make good decisions was developed by making bad ones.
Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
Wordcount: 219, Time to read: 3 minutes
"Nobody likes the changes done unto them," I explain. "Everybody likes the changes they do unto others!" It usually takes a few moments for the participants to absorb my words. Slowly, smiles appear and heads begin to nod in agreement. The ugly truth about change is that it's constant. Successful businesses avoid the disruption it usually brings by preparing for the unexpected.
When Delegation Fails
Wordcount: 263, Time to read: 2 minutes
Most people were introduced to delegation by watching their mother delegate "chores" a model that doesn't translate well to a professional environment. The delegator must ensure the chosen delegate has sufficient authority to fulfill the delegated responsibility. Without that in place, the delegate will be unable to succeed. Using a locked door as a metaphor: if I need you to go into a secured room, you're doomed to fail without the key. Without appropriate authority, so is any delegate.
The Arc of Success
Wordcount: 219, Time to read: 2 minutes
Every business, if it survives, travels the same Arc: Success leads to Growth, which leads to Complexity, which leads to Controls, which leads to Loss of flexibility. The first cycle is youth when expertise and maturity begin to form. The second is adolescence, marked by two disruptive shifts: a transition of leadership, and a transition to a more formal, less entrepreneurial culture. The third is adulthood, when a business can finally solve problems it's never faced before, even without all the answers.
Need Capital? Have A Solid Business Plan
Wordcount: 874, Time to read: 6 minutes
When good things happen to small businesses, they tend to run out of cash. Between customers who pay slowly, vendors who want to be paid fast, marketing and building your team, growth is expensive. If you've been successful growing your business, you're eventually going to need more money, and a banker is often your best source of funds.
