“Customers tend to avoid a restaurant that’s going aswamp in its own sludge.” McDonald’s Ray Kroc used to tell his franchisees and managers. He demanded that each restaurant, especially the restrooms, be spic and span, and he would totally flip out if he walked into one of his restaurants and found it anything less than spotless. If […]
McDonald’s has gone through its share of ups and downs in its history that now spans nearly 80 years. They always seem to weather whatever storm they face, and as a shareholder, I’ve got faith that they’ll eventually get back on track. And I don’t just feel confident about their stock price because my kid […]
A lot of folks dream about owning their own business so that they’ll have the freedom to do the things they most want to do. Unfortunately, once they get into the business, they find that rather than owning the business the business owns them far worse than the job they left ever did. What I’m […]
Ready..fire…aim isn’t such a bad approach to strategy. Sometimes you simply don’t know if something’s going to work or not unless you try it. Trying, then, gives you FEEDBACK you can use to adjust the PLAN and get better next time. Remember, it’s a process: Plan, Organize, Implement, and Control. For some, the really hard […]
When I first wrote about CVS’s decision to end its sale of tobacco products, I praised how the decision honored their mission. I also had some concerns about how Wall Street would react to CVS’s decision, which essentially meant that it would be foregoing several million in revenue as it said goodbye to tobacco products. […]
You’ve probably heard this one before, but like a lot of good stories, it bears repeating. Two sales people from an American shoe company visit Aboriginal Australia. One reports back, somewhat despondently, “There is no market here…nobody wears shoes.” The other reports back, excitedly, “There are tons of customers here…nobody wears shoes! Send inventory immediately!” […]
I’m as bad as anybody else about complaining about how it seems like everyone is either talking or texting, that none of us communicate in person like we used to, that it’s a big time waster, yadda yadda yadda. But perish the thought that I might have to ever go an hour without my smartphone! […]
I know you’ve heard success is a process, not an event (ahem…that was last week’s post, after all…). But what, exactly, is this “process” we keep referring to? For the answer to that question, like so many that appear on the journey, we can simply go back to the basics. The very essence of the […]
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