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Donald Mitchell's Articles Personal Development Writing Culture and Society Career Strategic Planning Non Profit Organizations Leadership Start Up Entrepreneurship Communication Business Opportunities Business Family Display Category|Title|Newest|Oldest "Where Are We Going, and How Do We Get There?" -- The Directionless Stall A fundamental problem that most organizations have when encountering irresistible forces is the resulting confusion that stems from a lack of a clear understanding of what the enterprise itself is pursuing. This article explores that problem. A Balance of Views Can Help You Strike Out Successfully in All Directions Optimism and pessimism each have their uses. Put them to work. A Hands-On Approach to Solving Problems Helps a Distance Learner Spring into Engineering Management Many people who do technical work would like to become managers of such technical work. This article looks at how one person made the shift. A Leader's Job One -- Set the Right Goals to Make Helpful Breakthroughs Few organizations have any goals to make breakthroughs. It's no wonder they don't. This article explains how to set the right breakthrough goals. A Lifelong Learner Lightens His and Others' Loads Learning how to learn can lighten your load . . . and then you can help others do the same. A Masterful Student Publishes His Work and Gains Worldwide Influence It's not enough to know what you are doing: Someone must notice you before you can have influence. This paper describes how an experienced executive went back to school to create a book that launched him and his organization into worldwide prominence. A Narrowed Focus Can Concentrate Business Model Innovation Success EMC, the data storage giant, went from being a marginal also-ran into an industry powerhouse by first concentrating its business model innovation where the value would be highest. This article provides a case history you can learn from. A New Approach to Measuring Strategic Best Practices Reveals New Lessons This article describes what was learned from the first real-time study of CEO best practices in creating unrivaled growth on a continuing basis. A Physician Starts Life Mastery Through Earning an Online MBA Many people learn the advanced material before mastering the basics. How can they go back and fill in those practical gaps? This article describes how online education can help. A Teacher and Her Students Gain Practical Advantages After She Returns to Being a Student Teachers want to become more effective and motivated. This article describes how a teacher used earning an MBA to accomplish both objectives. A Technical Whiz Becomes a Business Leader Many technical people dream of moving into management. But the pathway isn't clear. This real-life example should provide lots of guidance for making such a shift. A Woman Overcomes a Little Slip That Slowed Her Business Career When we are young, a little delay in our education or career can be very discouraging. But it's not the delay that counts: It's what you do about it. This article shows how one woman overcame an annoying delay to succeed. Accurate Estimations of Powerful Trends Leads to Profitable Progress Some underestimate powerful trends and take on more than they can handle. Achieve the Lowest Costs -- Simplify Simplification What's better than simplification? Simplification that takes less time and effort is the answer to that question. Act Fast When Customers and the Community Lose Faith in Your Offerings Helplessness is most dangerous when customers and others are concerned about whether they can trust you. Act Like Your Life Depends on Action, and You'll Beat the Competition In many business situations, taking action is better than identifying the ideal action. Figure out where immediate action is needed and take that action to gain a competitive advantage. Adapt to Changes in Irresistible Forces: Guerrillas, Games, and Drills This article looks at potential ways to improve in adapting to changes in irresistible forces to make more profit. Adapting to Changes in Irresistible Forces: Optimism, Options, and Open-Mindedness Optimism, options, and open-mindedness can help you profitably adapt to changes in irresistible forces. This article explains how. Add Breakthrough Solution Cost-Reduction Capability Spread knowledge of how to achieve cost breakthroughs and you'll be amazed at how much better you do. Add Desirable Do-It-Yourself Features to Lower Costs and Add Customers Everyone has had the experience of being waited on by a ham-handed person who made things worse. At such moments, most people have yearned to do it themselves. Add More Value for Your Beneficiaries by Picking the Right Benefits Some people think that being an charitable enterprise means you just have to give things away. But it's much better to give away the right things. Otherwise, you won't be able to help as many people. Add Unique Capabilities with Outsourcing Most organizations are too small to attract and retain rare specialists. By outsourcing, such organizations can access such valuable skills. Admit You Are Wrong, or Make Your Situation and Eventual Embarrassment Worse Hiding mistakes to avoid embarrassment often requires making worse mistakes, mistakes that create even worse problems and embarrassment. Adopt an Ageless Management Perspective See the world through the eyes of those from all age groups and you'll accomplish more with irresistible forces. An Action Plan for Irresistible Force Management Nine action steps can help you get the most benefits from irresistible forces outside of your control. An Nth Degree Strategic Analysis of the Internet Nth degree thinking allows us to make extreme assumptions about irresistible forces as a way to devising strategies that leave us better off regardless of what the forces do. This article applies that approach to analyzing Internet effects on a business. An Online MBA Helps a Copy Cat Entrepreneur Become an Educational Leader Entrepreneurs can improve their chances of success by mastering the key perspectives of good business management rather than just copying what others are doing. This article contains an example of how one entrepreneur pursued this lesson. Anticipate Where the State-of-the-Art Will Be If You Want to Reach Past That Level Many business people are locked into poor performance by aiming to meet standards that were obsolete years ago. They need to dig their heads out of the sand and look forward to where the best performance levels of today seem to be headed in the near future. With that perspective, they can begin to identify ways to improve beyond that future level of performance. Anticipating Changes in Irresistible Forces: History, People, and Precursors History, people, and precursors can provide valuable perspectives for anticipating changes in powerful trends. Anticipating Changes in Irresistible Forces: Secrets, Standards, and a Head Start This article explains some of the most advantageous ways to anticipate changes in irresistible forces to gain more profit advantages. Apply New Thinking Habits in Choosing a Career This article shows better ways to choose a career by looking at how you can use factors outside your control too prosper. Are You Best Suited by One Strategy or Two for Eliminating Obstacles to Exponential Growth Efficiency favors one strategy for expanding growth, but sometimes you get better results by following two complementary strategies. This article looks at how to decide which approach is better. Are You on the Yellow Brick Road to Success? Each organization can find an optimal route to success after considering how irresistible forces will affect its activities. Are You Ready to Adapt to Irresistible Forces? It's not enough to know about irresistible forces; you need to be prepared to adapt to them. Are Your Measurements Making You Look Bad? Most organizations have measurements they use to establish how well they are doing. Many of these measurements can be misleading when it comes to performing well for customers. This article explains better ways of measuring to get the optimal results. Ask the World to Compete to Find Breakthrough Methods Expecting your organization to find all of the breakthrough methods that you could use is unrealistic. Expand your search and you'll enjoy more breakthroughs. Ask Your Customers, Users, and Beneficiaries What's Needed and What's Unnecessary To make exponential cost reductions, you need to check first with those who will be most affected. Find out what they don't want or need . . . and eliminate those elements. Attention All Hands: Go To Battle Stations To Prepare For Trend Shifts Rehearsals for unexpected shifts in irresistible forces can provide confidence and experience in what to do. Attract More Readers than Most Best Selling Authors Selling books is viewed by many authors as a way to make money, but if you want influence getting readers is a much better idea. This article explains how to reach hundreds of thousands of readers. Automate Important Tasks That Cannot Be Eliminated or Simplified Further Everyone knows that automation can save time and effort. But if you automate something that doesn't need to be done, you've just increased costs. That doesn't make sense. Avoid Giving Incentives to Take Unlimited Risks When you can gain a fortune and only lose your job if things go wrong, many will choose to bet someone else's house to take a chance. That leads to disastrous losses. Avoid Incorrect Methods of Identifying Outsourcing Choices Outsourcing can be very helpful if you pick the right areas to look and locate the best suppliers. Otherwise, you make things worse by spending time on outsourcing. Avoid Overoptimism That Leads to Taking Success for Granted When irresistible forces shift, a company's overoptimistic actions will lead to achieving much less than full potential, or possibly even disaster. This article provides you with a guide to avoiding the harmful consequences of viewing the circumstances of your actions only through rose-colored glasses. Avoid the Wishful Thinking Stall If You Want to Enjoy Irresistible Growth Don't assume that you know what future conditions will be. You'll just make a fool out of yourself if you do and miss valuable growth opportunities. Banish that Helpless Feeling When Trends Turn Negative Helplessness is a state of mind, fueled by emotion. You can take practical steps to banish that feeling and move toward valuable solutions. Barriers to Reaching Ignorant Potential Customers Many business leaders just assume they can reach all of their potential customers effectively by taking out some advertising. But it's much harder than that to get the attention of potential customers. This article looks at the barriers to attention and suggests some questions that can lead to solutions. Be a Role Model for Irresistible Force Management Set a good example in dealing with irresistible forces, and your family will learn faster and be more effective. Be Aggressive in Seeking Out Future Best Practices Concerning Powerful Trends If you stop your search too soon, you'll miss most of the opportunity to take more profitable advantage of irresistible forces. Be As Strategic As Bill Gates in Choosing Breakthrough Projects Leaders make a mistake when they let enthusiasm direct their breakthroughs. Pick the right strategic advantage instead and you can accomplish vastly more. This article describes how to take control over breakthrough project selection. Be Attracted to What Repels You to Make a Strategic Breakthrough Most of us avoid what smells bad, looks unattractive, and sounds awful. Because of that, untapped opportunities lurk where no one wants to go. Be Battle Tested in Adapting to Powerful Trends and Irresistible Forces This article discusses the potential of using games and simulations to learn how to adapt to irresistible forces and powerful trends. Be Careful: Fast-Moving Trends Often Don't Continue Look to the causes of trends before believing that they will continue. Be Curious About Trends Before They Affect Your Company If you wait until trends are affecting you, you will miss most of the opportunities these trends bring. Look around before you are affected. Be Flexible and Adapt, or Break into Worthless Pieces Create more flexibility in your organization, and you will do better when irresistible forces shift. Be Flexible with Selecting and Employing Resources Customers' needs and wants change. If you are flexible in serving those needs, you'll do better. Creating a process that flourishes with flexibility is a key ingredient in that success. Be More Available to Your Customers Many organizations schedule their hours to make life pleasant for employees. That can be costly if those hours make life unpleasant for customers. This article explains how to think about the hours you operate. Be Prepared for the Rules to Change in the Middle of the Game Many build strategies for new entrepreneurial directions around the assumption that business rules won't change. That's a dangerous assumption to make. Be Prepared for Unexpected Shifts in Powerful Trends So You Don't End Up Bankrupt Like the wind, powerful trends shift in direction. Don't be caught leaning in the wrong direction. Be Readier Than Anyone Else to Anticipate Now and Later Undoubtedly, you can gain the most benefit from irresistible forces if you have proprietary advantages into those forces that no one else can match. Be Sensitive to Changes in Your Monitors of Irresistible Forces It's not enough to track irresistible forces; you must be prepared to act as soon as possible when they shift. Be Wise Like an Owl in Choosing Your Breakthrough Directions Many leaders set their targets for breakthroughs in the wrong areas. As a result, they miss the opportunity to make greater improvements from the same time, money, and effort. This article provides a plan for making better choices of breakthrough targets. Become a Practical Optimist to Seize the Best Opportunities from What's New Most people are justifiably skeptical of new activities that aren't fully developed yet. Those activities seem juvenile, not authentic, undesirable, and annoying. Yet with improvements, those activities can become the best thing going. How do you decide when that's going to be the case so you can cash in? This article describes a discipline you can use to find the best opportunities. Being a Copy Cat Can Pay Off Big When Partners Show the Way to Success Everyone wants to know the inside word about how to succeed. Check to see if a partner can deliver that word to you. Being Satisified with Hiding Problems Leads to Fatal Inaction Leaders and managers need to stir up their people to avoid stagnation. Beware the Current Path to Profit Growth: It May Be the Most Expensive and Longest Leaders fall in love with their strategies. They like to blame execution for any setbacks. If irresistible forces are causing your problems, you need a different strategy. Blow Away Movable Barriers to Rapid Profit Growth The best ways to grow profits are often barred. The wise leader realizes that such barriers need to be removed. This article describes why this is an important perspective. Boxed In: Which Way Are We Going? Leaders can easily define paths for growth that actually restrict the potential to expand. Wise leaders will be more careful to avoid getting boxed in. Breakthroughs Are Available If You Hold the Right Contest to Get Help from Outside Your Organization Productivity breakthroughs that can save lives, make large gains in performance, and cut costs with the same time, effort, and resources in for-profit and nonprofit organizations. Many people find it hard to locate such breakthroughs, but a new method of holding global contests seems to be solving that limitation. This article provides examples of such contests. Build Market Leadership and Prosperity What is the job of a leader? This article argues that it is to continually upgrade to better business models rather than to improve the old ones. Build Your Business Model to Expand the Market Faster Insights into cost reduction often come from market development. You also need to incorporate those insights into your business model in order to gain the most cost reduction. Business Model Innovation Is More Important Than New Technology to Your Success Most organizations today spend a fortune on anticipating and applying new technologies to enhance their effectiveness. Yet most business model innovations provide bigger payoffs and are easier to implement. Is it time you shifted your focus? Can We Talk About What's Working And What's Not . . . And Why? Errors will always occur, but we fail to gain advantages from errors unless we study what happened and learn from the experience. Cancel Delays that Harm Customers to Create More Profitable Growth Most businesses operate for their convenience, rather than for the convenience of the customer. This article explores the importance of changing that focus. Carefully Investigate Powerful Government Trends Trends driven by government action often turn out to be misleading fads. Be careful you aren't fooled. Challenge Your Organization to Do More After You've Simplified As Much As You Think You Can People quickly run out of simplification ideas in looking for cost reductions. But when they return to the task afresh, they find many more opportunities. Check the Downside to Be Sure You Enjoy the Upside Most leaders forget to check out what can go wrong when they choose an action. This article looks at how to look at the unappreciated risks. Check Trends to See If They Are Fads or Long-Lasting Directions Many people are fooled into thinking that short-term fads are doing to last, and vice versa. Check Your Organization's Values Before Launching into Improvement This article describes a self-assessment you can use to determine if your organization is employing appropriate values necessary to succeed. Check Your Plan Before You Act Many business people have the habit of repeating what they've done before. Such a habit becomes harmful when the plan for creating results is the wrong one. This article looks at using measurements to focus on improvements instead. Check Your Skill Box to See What's Missing A missing skill can leave your organization motionless like a car without gasoline. Check Your Strategy by Giving Your Optimism Regular Reality Check-Ups Unfounded optimism leads to missing opportunities. Practical optimism looks for opportunities and turns them into accomplishments. Check, Recheck, and Check Again Your Optimistic Assumptions Leave out the spark plugs from an engine and it won't do anything for you. Likewise, leave out one key action and you often won't succeed either. Your insurance is to be sure you know what all the needed actions are and how to do them. Combine Individual and Group Perfection to Make the Most Valuable Breakthroughs One person can only do so much. But groups often get in one another's way. This article shows how to use both individual excellence and organizational coordination to accomplish breakthroughs. Combine the Best of Today in New Ways to Outperform Competitors' Bests Tomorrow Chances are that your organization does not yet know how to find and select the improved practice elements that, when combined for the first time, will drive you well ahead of the competition. This article gives you shortcuts to identify future best practices. Complete Your Organization's Skill Box After assessing what skills you lack for dealing with irresistible forces, you need to add those skills. This articles explores how to do that. Confidently Prepare for the Best When You Feel Helpless When you feel overwhelmed, the best path for creating a solution is to assume you will succeed. This article helps you create that mental process. Connect the Dots Correctly to Succeed Many of us get into trouble by making assumptions that aren't even close to being true. From there, we spin fantasies of what might work . . . without taking the time to check out thinking. This article shows how you can focus on the right areas for improvements and progress. Consider All Your Costs Before Adding New Products and Services Sometimes you are better off not adding an offering because your costs go up faster than your profit contribution. This article shows how to avoid that problem and add highly profitable new offerings for your customers. Consider How Adverse Conditions Can Be a Blessing in Disguise Any surprise startles us, making us feel uneasy. But the surprise may be a great blessing after we relax and think about what we are actually facing. Consider How Much Advance Warning You Need of Changed Conditions Your selection of a barometer to anticipate shifts in irresistible forces should be influenced both by its accuracy and by how much advance warning of the change you want to anticipate the barometer provides. Correct Misperceptions That Drive Away Potential Customers and Beneficiaries Most people misunderstand what you do and what the benefits are. This article explains how those misperceptions occur and how to overcome them. Create a Bias for Eliminating the Unnecessary Everyone sees wasteful activities. Most organizations make it unclear how to get rid of those wasteful actions. By changing that circumstance to encouraging everyone to eliminate the wasteful, great cost reductions will follow. Create a One-Step Solution for Purchasing Your Offering Make buying what you offer simple, and many more people will buy. This article explores lessons for leaders and managers. Create Changes in Irresistible Forces: Now You're Cooking! If you can influence changes in powerful trends, that's a more effective way to create better strategies than to simply adapt to such trends. Create Full Flavored Effectiveness by Seasoning Improvements with Complementary Instincts Many businesspeople try to explore improvements too narrowly. That's like always seasoning your food with salt only . . . it's not good for your blood pressure and the taste gets boring. Create More Profitable Business Models by Determining the Needs of Beneficiaries, Customers, Most business models deliver the wrong benefits. Correct that misperception, and you will can have a strong foundation for a more profitable business model. Customize to Simplify, Reduce Costs, and Be More Effective: Turn Ruby Slippers into Traveling Shoes Most people think of custom offerings as being more expensive to make and deliver. Today, the opposite is usually true. As a result, you can be more satisfying to customers while also reducing costs. Danger: Your Beliefs Are Destroying Your Best Opportunities Why don't more people make breakthroughs? It's because they believe that breakthroughs aren't possible. This article explains how to get past that purely mental roadblock. Defending Failed Directions Can Direct You Away from Profitable Progress Some become frozen into following failed policies because they don't want to admit they made a mistake. That pride can be costly when it leads to harmful inaction. Delay Is Almost Always Costly: Act Now to Profit More! Procrastinators falsely believe that delay is seldom a disadvantage. The opposite is true . . . you often die by inches because of delays. This article looks at how to be rational about deciding when immediate action makes more sense than further study, thought, and delay.  1 | 2 | 3 | 4	Sign Up for a free account or learn more. 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