Some businesses bob along in a sea of sameness and an ocean of simple existence or complacency .  Others see the opportunity and strive for growth, change, market share, innovation and improvement.  What kind of business do you own/manage/work for? It continues to amaze that that some people are not driven towards continual improvement.  "Everything's fine" is their mantra, even while they [...]

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According to author B.J. Mendelson in his recent book "Social Media is Bullshit": "We live in a world where it is far easier to make money telling people how to get rich using the Internet than it is to actually get rich using it". Social media has legions of fans as well as critics, and try as one may, any attempt to sway them from whichever position they hold would be a waste of time and [...]

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A dairy company ran a promotion that had a device inside small milk cartons that made a "moo" sound when the carton was opened. The promotion hit the wall when one of the cartons was opened on an airplane and the "lucky winner" looked inside and saw wires. Panic ensued and the plane was forced to make an emergency landing. The dairy company was held responsible for all the costs associated with [...]

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In The Globe and Mail’s Report on Business Harvey Schachter quotes Peggy Cunningham, Dean of Management at Dalhousie University in Halifax who says “…surround yourself with smart people who have different perspectives and different skills. Listen to them respectfully and attentively, draw out their ideas, and work to integrate their perspectives into your plans and solutions to problems.”[...]

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Recently my colleague wrote an intriguing post about the (relatively) new LinkedIn feature they call Endorsements.  This feature is different to the valuable feature they have had for a long time, called Recommendations. The Recommendation feature requires that someone else provides a testimonial for you that you can approve and allow it to be posted onto your profile. The Endorsement feature [...]

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The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines a controller as “a person in charge of expenditure esp. a steward or comptroller.”  According to Wikipedia “a comptroller is a management level position responsible for supervising the quality of accounting and financial reporting of an organization.” In Canada we often use the title Controller in a broader sense but I find that many businesses focus [...]

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Twitter, Google+, Facebook, LinkedIn - the names go on and on, and the task to get connected socially gets tougher and tougher.  No, it's really not a problem gaining more friends on Facebook, or a hundred extra Twitter followers, but is that really social networking? Making a momentary connection with someone that has 3,000 "followers" or "friends" does nothing for either party unless the [...]

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Many leaders in today’s small and mid-size companies struggle with marketing. Change is so revolutionary that as soon as they learn something new it becomes out of date.  So how do they manage their marketing function if they haven’t formalized it in some way?  Do they have a plan and do they have resources to manage the day to day activities that make marketing so challenging to deal with? [...]

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When social media became the new rage of marketing a few years back so many people saw it as the new holy grail.  In reality, this happens every few years as the new and the exciting takes over the imagination of the media who drive it incessantly until something newer and more exciting arrives and we follow that holy grail till it becomes passe. And so, each new innovation does not disappear, it[...]

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Have you ever taken five minutes to write down how many different ways there are to market a company?  A product?  A service?  Let me get you started: Advertising Social media Newsletters Blogs Business Cards SEO Media relations Writing articles Personal networking Testimonials Get the idea? Here's my challenge: take 5 minutes right now and see if you can beat my list - which is 150 strong [...]

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