This is the season for joy, love, and kindness—yet it seems like a holiday miracle when you get any joy, love, and kindness as you are out shopping for holiday gifts. I was at a huge warehouse store last week. It was a bit wild. There were rabid sample-seekers, last minute bargain hunters, multitudes of…
What’s your favorite place to shop? One of my favorites is my local Ace Hardware store. It has a unique combination of the home improvement products you’d expect plus décor items to make your house feel more like a home. But that is not why I really shop there. What stands out for me and…
A new white paper from The Ken Blanchard Companies shows that poor leadership is costing the average company an amount equal to 7% of their annual revenue. That’s over a million dollars a year for any organization with $15 million dollars or more in annual sales. The three big culprits? Employee turnover. Poor leadership is…
In a recent article entitled Waging the War for Shoppers’ Wallets, researchers at Gallup have identified that the victors in retail will be the ones who create an engaging customer experience. Their research shows that fully engaged customers spend $20 more per transaction than average customers at the same stores. A retailers’ most effective strategy…
Employee engagement is a popular topic these days and a whole industry has sprung up around helping managers identify people’s strengths, discover their motivations, and provide the tools and resources people need to succeed. The goal is to create a high-energy work environment where people want to come to work and be their best. But do…
In an article for the May issue of Chief Learning Officer magazine entitled The Leadership-Profit Chain, authors Drea Zigarmi and Scott Blanchard identify the impact of leadership behaviors on employee passion and customer devotion. Their research shows that organizations can’t treat employees poorly, put pressure on them, and then expect them to perform at high levels. Sometimes organizations…
In a column for Fast Company, Paul Worthington describes the impact that consumers can have on the image, reputation, and sales of your company’s products and services. As Worthington explains, “Consider for a moment that the humble Amazon product review can nullify millions of dollars of ad spend, that a search for “best razor” on…
Maintaining the status quo costs more than you think. In fact, in the average organization it costs over $1,000,000 dollars a year according to The Ken Blanchard Companies new Cost of Doing Nothing Calculator. The calculator which was just released on the company’s web site identifies three potential drains on performance—employee turnover, customer satisfaction, and…