Entries by Geoff Wilson

Your lack of takt is showing!

The faithful delivery of services and product on time is a challenge, maybe it’s time to apply more production-floor common sense to services. Stop me if you’ve heard this story before:  An executive hires a consultant to solve a problem.  The consulting agreement is for a lot of work–maybe redesigning the way an organization is […]

Don’t forget the sales!

The sales function far too often treated like an impenetrable combination of personalities, voodoo, and tradition.  It’s time for that to stop. I have a theory when it comes to sales.  It goes something like this: Along the way in their executive development, a lot of really smart people develop a disdain for sales as […]

Systems vs. goals in your search for success

Much is said about whether success is better framed as a goal or as a system…I think it’s both, but at different times. Have you ever had a question posed to you that made you think more than it should have? A team member recently asked me if I was a goal-oriented person.  My response […]

Are you measuring or are you moving?

Effective executives balance time spent moving vs. time spent measuring. The case One fine day at a backyard barbecue, a utility executive says to a cloud software executive, “I have found that a dashboard for my business helps me understand it.” The software executive says “great, what’s happening today?” The utility executive, a little exasperated, […]

Stay a little bit childish

Albert Einstein once said that the reason he was so good at thinking about time and space was that he was delayed in his childhood development to the degree that he forgot to forget about such wondrous things as an adult. The direct quote is this: “I sometimes ask myself how it came about that […]

The great strategic “wreck-oning”

The shocks to your system might not be what you think they are.  You’d better take a closer look. Hey, you there…the guy or gal with the life you always wanted.  How does it feel? You are working from home.  Your computer screen has become your window into the world.  And, you have realized that […]

Who do you turn to when the blood hits the floor?

Times like these tend to reveal who we can really trust to deliver. A crazy phenomenon has happened over the past couple of weeks as the world has digested the coronavirus shock. Executives, many of whom have never been in executive roles in a massive shock, have had to take stock of their teams in […]

When it all goes to VUCA, what do you do?

Is there an operating system for strategy under absolute uncertainty? Well, the world has gone to hell in a handbasket. It certainly didn’t take long, did it? Ask anyone and they will tell you that the world is somewhere between an intense over-reaction and The Walking Dead’s best impression of The End Of The World […]

Legacy lessons from NASCAR’s worst wreck ever

We all leave a legacy of some sort. Ryan Newman’s survival of NASCAR’s worst wreck ever highlights the contrasts of passive and active legacies. Do you know the legacy you are leaving with your business, team, or organization? It’s surprising how little this topic actually gets highlighted when managers and executive teams focus on their […]