Clearing the Cobwebs & Taking a Fresh Look

As leaders, our job is to enable our company to weather the storm in order to keep our doors open for the longterm. This is a worthy endeavor, as surviving firms enjoy a prime position for growth when the economy rebounds. In a society where nine of every ten people seem to ‘give up’ on their dreams by taking the easy way out, being among the one out of ten who hang in there already makes us...

Making Time

 Life is full of choices. We can choose to schedule just two minutes between connecting flights or to drive down the freeway just two feet from the rear bumper of the vehicle ahead of us. Such habits will likely result in a stream of otherwise avoidable “emergencies” along the way! Similarly, if we choose to cram our schedule too full, or simply react to real-time demands, we’ll soon find...

Your Leadership IQ

Lech Walesa told Congress that there is a declining world market for words. He’s right. The only thing the world believes anymore is behavior, because we all see it instantaneously. None of us may preach anymore. We must behave.” Max DePree, Chairman Herman Miller Leaders lead, and leadership by example is the best technique as proven for thousands of years. No great leader has ever been...

Living in Contagious Oneness

What a wonderfully unsearchable gift … Christ in us! John’s gospel provides us with life-changing truth and encouragement regarding the heart and mind of our Creator. We have the incomprehensible privilege to be invited into eternal living unity with the only perfectly holy, unified, and intimate relationship in the universe; the Triune Godhead. Imagine the implications. For most of us, the...

Seizing the Moment (part 2)

Here we are, in the middle of an extended recession, hunkered down and unsure as to when the pressure will let up. Many of us are praying for restored demand and a healthy backlog that will allow us to “breathe easy” again. Is this where you are today? Is your attitude one of simply waiting out the slump and surviving to play the game another day the same way we always did? One of the grand...

I Coulda Been a Contender!

“I felt I had to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints.” Jude v3 Marlon Brando’s pitiful angst in delivering the most famous line in 1954’s“best picture,” On the Waterfront, still resonates with us since it deals with a common condition: being burdened by regret for previous actions and lost opportunities. Brando’s character,...

Diligence – A Key to Order

For C12 members, the key question is “What does God expect or require of us?” We propose that the answer is ‘diligence,’ defined by the dictionary as “the attention and care legally expected or required of a person.” A practical definition would be, “to meet the requirement inherent in a given situation, responsibility or relationship.” In Kingdom terms, we might further say:...

Marketing Demystified

 Marketing Demystified  “If the circus is coming to town and you paint a sign saying “Circus coming to the Fairground Saturday,” that’s advertising. If you put the sign on the back of an elephant and walk it into town, that’s promotion. If the elephant walks through the mayor’s flower bed, that’s publicity. And if you get the mayor to laugh about it,...

Integrity – I’ve got it! Or do I?

Practically speaking, integrity means that we live without obvious contradiction between what we say we believe and what we actually do. There’s an observable consistency about them, linking their words to their actions. A common slang expression for people with integrity is that they “walk their talk,” meaning that what they say and do are consistent. A ‘high integrity’ person lives...

Growing Your Business-A Five Point Approach to Branding

A Five-Point Approach to Branding 1. Defining your Dominant Selling Idea (DSI) Our DSI is a unifying, energizing, focusing, trust-building, clutter-removing, lean-value-creating notion – a motivating difference at the moment of the purchase decision – that communicates our #1 position in a ‘desirable specialty’ that’s important to our target customers. That’s a mouthful, but unless...