Leadership Lessons from the Marine Corps

While the Marines are most known for intense instruction, their training success is actually due not so much to its rigor; but rather, to the quality of the personnel who are chosen as trainers. Unlike other organizations, the Marines select their top performers to serve as trainers and even pull them off the front lines to do so. Read more...

Fosbury's innovative flop 

In 1968, a young American high jumper named Dick Fosbury won the Olympic gold medal with a new and unorthodox style. Known as the Fosbury Flop, it remains the stardard technique for world-class jumpers today and is considered track & field’s most successful innovation. Read more...

Get out of the office; talk to your customers 

You may have a reasonable hypothesis on who your customers are and what they want, but until you validate this by getting out of the office and meeting with them face-to-face, all you really have is an educated guess. Remember, executives talking to other executives about customer needs is ridiculous. Read more...

Basketball's disruptive innovation

Of all the changes that have occurred in basketball since its inception, which is considered the game’s most important? The dunk? The shot clock? The Laker Girls? All are significant, but this particular breakthrough is considered to be one of basketball’s true disruptive innovations. Read more...

Unexpected customers from unexpected matkets 

According to serial entrepreneur and author Steven Gary Blank, the greatest risk--and hence the greatest cause of failure--is not in the development of a new product but in the development of customers and markets. Finding these customers means sometimes looking in the most unexpected places. Read more...

Leadership lessons from Raymond Spruance 

Admiral Raymond Spruance and his U.S. Central Pacific Fleet never lost a battle to the enemy during World War II. Want to get your leadership team to achieve similar results during your company’s battles? Here are three lessons learned from Spruance that will give you a decisive edge over your competition. Read more...

Anchors, price and value

What's the best way to sell a $600 pair of shoes? Better marketing? Better packaging? Maybe...but perhaps the best way to sell them is to place them next to pair priced at $1,200. Anchor pricing has been used by luxury retailers for years, but can you apply similar techniques in the sale of high tech products and professional services? Read more...

Improvement is not innovation 

It’s easy to confuse improvement for innovation. The two terms have become interchangeable in today’s marketplace. But only innovation creates such superior outcomes that your competitors will be either unable or unwilling to come close in matching. Read more...

Full court press: A John Wooden lesson for today's CEO 

Before winning his first NCAA basketball championship in 1964, John Wooden enjoyed limited success at UCLA in sixteen previous seasons. So what was the tipping point for this sudden reversal of fortune? Better players? Better coaching? No, it turns that Wooden's success was the result of one of the great mid-course management corrections of all time. Read more...

Value-based pricing: Three keys to success

Value-based pricing is the ultimate objective for most organizations. It’s what enables successful firms to charge above-average industry margins for products; ultimately dricing superior bottom-line results. But as you move down the road of success for value-based pricing, beware of these three challenges that must be overcome to reach that final destination. Read more...

Reflections on leadership 

A brief interaction many years ago with former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin taught me more about risk than I could have ever learned in any formal classroom setting. He was the co-chairman of Goldman Sachs while I was just a young associate, but the lessons learned from that conversation remain with me even today. Read more...

Does value follow price? 

We're all familiar with the term “you get what you pay for”—but does it really factor into buyers’ perceptions of value today? When the Humane Society Silicon Valley faced a pet adoption and return challenge, they used an unconventional approach to solve the problem; they raised prices. Read more...