You may recall when you were a kid or when playing with your kids the activity of connect the dots.  The fun of this game is that as you connect the dots, assuming you do it correctly, the dots come together to reveal a bigger picture. The same thing goes for communication.  In fact, if you want people to really “get” what it is you’re communicating, you have to connect the dots.  People only understand ideas in...

The best form of customer service is getting it right the first time.  But as we know, that doesn’t always happen.  In doing training and consulting, I get to fly all over the world.  And as unbelievable as it may be, when it comes to commercial travel, sometimes things don’t go as planned.  Shocking…I know. But on this particular occasion, I had to call Delta customer service to get an itinerary issue resolved.  I called after...

Certainly success is a good thing.  But that’s not to say that it doesn’t have negative consequences.  (Is that a triple negative?)  Anyways.  In the real world, success is not always clear cut.  Could we have been more successful?  How might our current success impact future success?  What tradeoffs did we make? In the academic world, success can easily be evaluated based on grades.  I sometimes teach university classes and...

“Either you made a mistake or you don’t know what you’re doing.  Which one is it?”  One of my friends found himself on the receiving end of this question during a monthly financial meeting with the CEO, his boss, his colleagues and some of his direct reports.  How do you think he felt after this incident? As you know, by now, properly delivered feedback is a great way to help keep your workforce motivated.  In...

Remember, the best way to motivate others is to give them the opportunity to motivate themselves.  Having your employees hit the ground running on Monday morning often has more to do with what you do on Friday than what you do on Monday.  If you want to have a great Monday, you need to start preparing on Friday. People tend to feel great on Fridays.  The weekend is coming and the excitement about the weekend, for some people, is better...

Companies understand that more than ever customers have choices.  Our goal of course should be to help our customer make the best choice possible by choosing us over our competitors.  One way to do that is to make it easy for people to buy from you. While this seems like common sense, not everyone follows this path.  Think about websites that use CAPTCHAS (those are the distorted words that you have to decipher in order to prove you’re...