The Growth Gap Part 3: Avoid the shiny new things
Avoid the Abundance Trap: Framework for saying NO What not to doClarity: avoid the shiny new things. Resolve your conflicts. Prioritize your opportunities Align your stars: Get your hands rowing in sync and in one direction. M+A: avoid the M+D merge and destroyHow to make the deal work.Clear goals, prioritization and rewarding the behaviors you […]
Never Waste a Failure
“Never Waste a Failure” — Nick Saban Although heartbreaking for Georgia, Alabama’s win in last week’s football championship game was remarkable in many ways, not the least was Nick Saban’s decision to play his untested freshman quarterback Tua Tagovailoa in the second half. Lots of lessons there! But what caught my attention was Saban’s […]
The Growth Gap Part 2: What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?
Creating Time to Think: Archimedes 200 BC / Eureka Away from the urgent and into the important If you don’t create time to think, nobody else will No new input: synthesize What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail? Drop constraints Allowing yourself to think big has not downside and a lot of […]
Two Points of Contact
I had my first-of-the-season shakedown cruise on the boat over the weekend. A lot happens on a shakedown, but nothing more important than remembering to always have two points of contact between me and the boat.This can be a foot and a hand, foot and a knee, and so on, but only one point is […]
The Right Time for Change
Creating internal strategies to drive and support your external growth. Karen discusses the fine line between too much change and stagnation. We must have change!
We are Corporate Athletes
As Jim Lehr and Tony Schwartz point out with their Corporate Athlete concept, we all work in cycles – sometimes we are conscious of them, sometimes not – and I’ve just come off of a “put your head down and get it done” cycle. I completely underestimated the amount of mental energy involved in moving. […]
Why-do-Smart-CEOs-Need-an-Adviser?
Creating internal strategies to drive and support your external growth. Karen discusses the reasons smart CEOs need support in order to decrease the likelihood of blind spots in their business.
Harvey, Houston, and Hometown Heroes
Many of us have stories about the recent hurricane that flooded my old hometown, Houston. Here’s the one closest to my heart. My sister, Susan, lives in Houston and is the Controller for a division of a large French geophysical services company. She and hundreds of others work in an office on the west side […]
Cast a Wide Net
Most of your time is spent solving problems, problems that are too big or too important to the organization for someone else to solve. These are the problems that get “kicked upstairs’.” It’s tempting to solve as many as we can, as quickly as we can. Of course, it feels good to check something off […]
M&A or M&D?
Karen notes the differences between successful M&A efforts, and those that destroy the value that you have acquired.
Scaling Compaq with Karen Walker – The Women in Tech Show
In the 80s, Compaq became one of the fastest growing companies in American History. Compaq pioneered the idea of building a computer that was compatible with IBM’s software. Back then, IBM was the dominant player in the personal computers space and their software was used everywhere. Karen Walker was Vice President of Operations at Compaq. […]
Decision Making Methods
Karen explains seven different decision making methods and the advantages and disadvantages of each.