Posted: August 6, 2014 | Categories: Leadership, Self-Improvement, Team Building

Have you ever come up with a great idea to solve a problem only to have it shot down right away?  If this happens to us enough, we could become discouraged and hesitate to share a future idea.  Good teams respect the principle of “idea fluency”.  Everyone should feel comfortable and confident in sharing their ideas.

If we have a good idea that we believe will solve an important problem, we need to prepare ourselves to sell our idea.  That requires that we work through these four basic problem solving questions that have been time tested for over 100 yearsRead More…

Posted: July 31, 2014 | Categories: Sales, Self-Improvement, Time management

We know that top-performing salespeople are very good at asking questions.  As prospects, we should plan our questions too.  It can save us big money.

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Posted: July 28, 2014 | Categories: Self-Improvement, Team Building

In the world of sports and business we sometimes hear the term, “Crush the competition”.  We want to be dominant in our lead.  The reality is, in most situations, the best is better by only a slight edge.

A few years ago I was reading the annual PGA player rankings in Golf Digest for the year.  The listing included the top 100 golfers in terms of earnings.  Also included were their stats regarding average strokes per tournament.  I was surprised to discover that the person in first place averaged only .76 less strokes per round than the person in 56th place.  That number is small, but the difference in earnings was over $1 million dollars.  The person in 1st place had the slight edge.
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Posted: July 25, 2014 | Categories: Management, Self-Improvement, Time management

My father worked for many decades as a project engineer for a major oil company.  He became a renowned expert in pipeline controls, and actually worked for three years straight as a consultant during the construction of the Alaskan Pipeline.  He was smart, intuitive, and the best problem solver I have ever known.
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Posted: July 1, 2014 | Categories: Self-Improvement

Nearly 50% of all college grad students seeking a PHD fail to achieve their goal.  What stops them short?  They don’t complete their dissertation.  Just the thought of something so big can be overwhelming.  So what happens?  They avoid, escape, and procrastinate working on the project.  After all, they have a year.  What is the rush?  The time passes, the days dwindle, crunch time comes, and they give up.Read More…