NEWSLETTER
Stay up to date with us
Newsletter Articles
Do you know your Net Promoter Score and why it is so important?
Do you know your company's Net Promoter Score (NPS)? More important, do you know why this is important for your business? The NPS is a simple, single survey question to help quantify customer loyalty and their willingness to recommend your company. It also provides...
IT’S LONELY AT THE TOP
In talking to Business Owners, how many times have you heard this phrase? “It’s lonely at the top.” Having been around small, medium sized family and closely held businesses our whole business careers spanning almost 50 years – we...
WHAT IS VALUE?
First, let us start by saying “VALUE IS IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER”. I wish that was my phrase but somebody said it way before my time. However, this phrase could not be more true than in the transaction world (of Mergers & Acquisitions, real estate etc.). In my...
RECOVERY OR REVOLUTION?
By Barry Worth, Partner “Your destiny is by choice and not by chance” So, what do you think? Is our business reopening going to be business as usual or are we going to go through a 21st century Industrial and Consumer Revolution? For those of you that think the...
Hope is not a strategy!
By Barry Worth, Partner These are hard times for everyone. I’m sure everyone is on overload with all the articles, emails and other communications regarding COVID-19. When I wrote my last article this past summer that appeared in our firm’s newsletter and posted on...
Cybersecurity Recommendations for Small Business
By Simon Huang Introduction October is National Cybersecurity Awareness Month – an ongoing effort by the government and industry to raise public awareness of cybersecurity and to safeguard the cyber activities of constituents. This, along with many other efforts and...
Improve Results by Raising the Bar – You don’t have to be Charles Dickens to have great expectations
How do leaders increase results without spending a dime? Raise the bar and set higher expectations! Sound easy? It is. Raising expectations is not about increasing workload, it is about setting higher expectations to increase results. Where do leaders begin? ...
Intelligent Risk Management – Are you ready for what’s around the curve?
By: Glen Justis, Senior Partner and Doug Menendez, Partner All leaders of commercial enterprises know that business involves risk. In fact, the definition of an entrepreneur is “one who organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of a business or enterprise.”[1] At...
How to Get Through the Business Exit Maze Part III: Implementation
By: Barry H. Worth, CM&AA Now that you have the various pieces of the puzzle in place and the company is ready to be put on the market to be sold - what is the process? Below are the puzzle answers with each piece fitting in at the appropriate time: Step 1: Goal...
Introducing Training on Demand
By, Sarah Dubberke ACHIEVING TODAY'S RESULTS, DEVELOPING TOMORROW'S LEADERS Experience on Demand is partnering with Kim Rochetti of Strategic Operating Systems (SOS) to offer targeted training solutions. Most employers are acutely aware of existing skill gaps in the...
Developing A Compelling Business Case
By Steve Finkelstein, Sr. Partner and Co-Founder Experience on Demand “If we had realized all of the benefits claimed by all of the business cases approved in the past five years we would have twice the revenue and profits.” Finance Industry Executive...
How To Get Through The Business Exit Maze Part 2: Succession Planning
By, Barry Worth – Partner When deciding to sell a business you’re first step is to know if you are financially and emotionally ready to part with the most important asset you built. If you aren’t ready to exit, you can still think long-term and begin assessing your...
Events and Programs
Board Effectiveness and Diversity Project
Why is this project important now? Executive Directors and board members readily share the challenges and desire to improve board effectiveness to impact agency growth and sustainability. Yet many struggle with knowing and practicing what are those components at the...
Insights Articles
ARE YOU READY FOR 2021?
Your Destiny is by Choice and not by Chance! Hope is Not a Strategy! Happy New Year and welcome to 2021. Hopefully, you have your goals and planning done for the New Year. Whether yes or no this article will help provide new insights into a great 2021. However,...
Why You Should Be Tapping into the Gig Economy
As a small business, it can be difficult to compete with the success of large corporations– particularly with significantly fewer resources. In order to compete, your business needs to be consistently growing and offering fresh and exciting solutions to clients, all...
Managing In Uncertain Times
By: Barry Worth, Partner Back in the early 1990’s I wrote an article about the same topic. Of course, it was a different time with different issues; however, the solutions are still the same. Therefore, I thought it would be a good thing to recycle the topic. At the...
7 Steps to Onboarding Employees that Stay Long-Term
Retaining employees long-term is a priority in business to avoid expensive mistakes. Your on-boarding process – what you do in the first 90 days after hiring someone new – is what will ultimately determine your hiring success rate. You need to examine what you’re...
How to Measure ROI in Your Networking
Networking is a tricky business strategy. It’s a long process and it’s hard to know just how much business you’re getting out of it, but when done well it can yield a great return in business. While measuring your return on investment is more straightforward with...
10 Time Management Strategies for Better Productivity
Each of us has only 24 hours in a day– so how do the most successful entrepreneurs manage to get so much more out of their days? The key is knowing how to manage your time and prioritize. Here are 10 tips to help you improve your own time management and have more...
How Millennial Women are Changing What it Means to Be a Business Leader
In today’s professional world, there is a “confidence gap” between men and women. Meaning that many working women lack self-confidence– which is a major obstacle preventing women from ascending up the career ladder. While professional women from the Baby Boomer...
Post Merger Integration: Done Deal? Not Really!
WOW! The closing is done and the new owners are ready to take over. So, what happens once the deal is closed and the two companies have merged into one? Well, they aren’t really one company yet. In essence, they’re still two companies with a common owner. Therefore,...
Do It Right For The First Time
If it costs $1 to prevent a problem, $10 to find it and $100 or more to fix it then we are better off spending our time to prevent problems, especially those that our customers will find. It is hard to argue with this logic but in practice we see organizations invest...
Tough Questions to Consider
Answer the questions below: Are you working on the business or in the business? Are you spending more time on opportunities or issues? Are you spending more time with your top performers or problem performers? Now, answer these questions: Why am I spending more...
The Role of Leadership in Accountability and Execution
Question 1: Explain how you established expectations. You did establish expectations, didn’t you? Or did you assume. . . Were the expectations you established clear? How do you know? Were the expectations understood? How do you know? Were the employees agreeable to...
Causal Factors Affecting Execution
By, Steve Finkelstein – Senior Partner There are many factors that can affect execution. These factors can work independently or together. They can affect large, medium or small organizations. They are non-discriminatory. However, identifying the factors that affect...
Why Companies Fail to Execute Strategic Plans
From working with many companies just like yours, our experience suggests the following reasons why companies fail to execute their strategies: There are too many items on the “things-to-do” list of initiatives. To make matters worse, there is little or no...
The Right Strategic Decisions
By, Steve Finkelstein – Senior Partner Asking the right strategic questions is crucial for business game play. The right strategic questions and your answers provide a framework from which you can prepare your company to move forward—and ahead—of the competition. ...
Efficient Ways to Utilize Networking
By, Frank Danzo – Senior Partner Measurable objectives that track performance are necessary in order to efficiently utilize networking in your selling process. The following five objectives offer a great starting point: Time Allocation. Determine how much time per...
Post-Recession Strategy Requires Adapting to the New Norm
Much like the recent spring storms that ripped through St. Louis and the Midwest, the latest recession wreaked havoc on the economy. And, like spring storms, recessions begin and end. But nothing is quite the same afterwards. What makes this recession so different?...
Improve Results By Raising the Bar
By, Steve Finkelstein – Senior Partner You don’t have to be Charles Dickens to have great expectations. How do leaders increase results without spending a dime? Raise the bar and set higher expectations! Sound easy? It is. Raising expectations is not about increasing...
Will We Have the Talent to Recover?
Will We Have the Talent to Recover? A recent report on talent skill gaps in the manufacturing industry sponsored by Deloitte and The Manufacturing Institute indicates that when business picks up we will not have the talent to meet the customer needs. With unemployment...
Great Strategies Can Be Destroyed By Poor Culture
By, Steve Finkelstein – Senior Partner and David Giffin – Partner and HR Practice Leader GREAT STRATEGIES CAN BE DESTROYED BY POOR CULTURES “Culture eats strategy for breakfast” Peter Drucker We have both seen over time that great strategies can be destroyed by poor...