Source: https://blogs.hbr.org by Kare Anderson A few years ago, DisneyWorld executives were wondering what most captured the attention of toddlers and infants at their theme park and hotels in Orlando, Florida. So they hired me and a cultural anthropologist to observe them as they passed by all the costumed cast members, animated creatures, twirling rides, [...]

By: Daniel Burrus In my new book Flash Foresight, I share seven principles that can make invisible opportunities visible. Knowing when to skip your problems can quickly transform your work and life. Every business has problems—some larger than others. Often when trying to “fix” a tough problem, the company gets even more mired in the [...]

By: Jon Gordon “Jon, never underestimate the power of an outside voice.” A CEO shared these words with me after I had just spoken to his company. “We brought you here to reinforce our message,” he said. “Our folks get tired of hearing us say it but when it comes from an outside voice it’s [...]

By: Daniel Burrus But even change itself has changed. Information and new knowledge now travel around the world at the speed of light, and technological innovation proceeds at close to the speed of thought. Today you cannot just reinvent now and then: to survive and thrive in a time of vertical change, you have to [...]

By: Daniel Burris In my new book Flash Foresight, I share seven principles that can make invisible opportunities visible. Knowing how and when to redefine and reinvent yourself and your company is critical. In the twenty-first century, the one and only thing you can depend on is transformation. Technology-driven business process transformation is a hard [...]

By: Daniel Burris In order to make the invisible future visible, make a list of both the Cyclical and Linear changes that have a high potential to impact both you and your customers and ask yourself, “What am I certain about?” Based on the certainties, what are the problems you are not having today, but [...]

By: Rory Vaden The point is that incredible pain is often the result of all different types of easy decisions. Therein lies The Pain Paradox. Choices that are easy in the short term yield difficult consequences in the long term. And choices that are difficult in the short term often yield favorable consequences in the [...]

The model below outlines a new framework that has the counter person and the warehouse person working together on behalf of the real customer. The operating philosophy shifts from deference to partnership. Influence is grounded in an allegiance to equality and interdependence making “selling and yelling” completely unnecessary. Communication is conversational rather than that of [...]

The other more insidious byproduct of the “who’s whose customer” war is the attention of both parties on internal conflict rather than on the real customer—the one writing the checks. The counter guy treated Mel like a kind of war correspondent—a nice feature for the folks back home but purely superfluous to the real battle. [...]

Internal Colleagues are not Internal Customers It is popular to use the concept…internal and external customer. But, it’s flawed. The attractiveness of the idea probably started with a line like, “If you’re not serving the customer, you’d better be serving someone who is.” It was first spoken in Ron Zemke and Karl Albrecht’s book Service [...]