ICMS Articles
We must ask Why? five times to get to the root cause of a problem. I was in the right place at the right time in 1985. I was the newly hired controller of a Motorola manufacturing plant. The company’s corporate leadership defined Six Sigma quality as our 5-year goal. To put that goal in...
10 June 2016 - 14:44,
by Tom Pryor,
in Business plans, Inspiration, Leadership, Uncategorized, No comments
Do you work in a good company but not sure what the future holds? If you answer “Yes”, you work in a non-prophet company. What is a prophet? The English word prophet comes from the Greek word προφήτης (profétés) meaning advocate or speaker. Every successful organization needs a prophet who advocates for a bright future....
As a Baby Boomer, I believe my preference for brevity was influenced by a 1950’s TV show Name That Tune. The contestants who could identify a song listening to the fewest number of notes won money, i.e., “I can name the song in 3 notes.” Someone asked this week for a definition of leadership. My...
You’ve likely heard about affluenza: the negative impacts of being raised with no consequences for bad behavior. This blog is about influenceza: the power of positive words and actions. Wielding power rarely results in lasting influence. But a person with the ability to influence people has lasting power. President Obama’s office has power but he...
For many Baby Boomer family-business owners, it’s wiser to exit the business via a gradual transition than leaving cold-turkey. The transition from working 5 workdays a week goes to 4-days, 3-days, 2-days, to 1-day a week and then blastoff to the next phase of your life. The transition method to exit a family business is so...
Once upon a time there was an entrepreneur who invented the world’s best black-ink pen. Customers loved them. Sales grew monthly. The profit margin grew from 5% to 10%. In the second year the Sales Manager recommended offering customers a pen with blue-ink. The entrepreneur replied “It’s okay with me, as long as you can...
Where should you focus if your business needs to grow? It’s logical to focus on identifying improvement ideas for the business; but, Success is NOT Logical. Logical is doing what the crowd does. But if you look closely at the results of those in the crowd, they’re NOT successful. To grow my business, I learned in...
Having a sense of meaning is essential for a man or woman to successfully retire or exit their family business. According to songwriter Paul Simon, there are 50 ways to leave your lover. If you’re the owner of a business, however, there are only 9 ways to leave the business you love: 1. Transition...
Who is responsible for strategic planning? Most people agree the answer is “the leader”. But most leaders … especially those of companies of less than 200 employees … don’t have a written strategic plan.
Written strategic plans provide numerous benefits. A written plan serves as a GPS for employees to use to arrive at the leader’s...
In her thought-provoking book The Crossroads of Should and Must, author Elle Luna says “Should is how other people want us to live our lives. Must is different. Unlike Should, Must doesn’t accept compromises. To choose Must is to say yes to hard work and constant effort.” Having served 19 years in corporate financial management...