[March 15, 2016] My wife is the one who educated me on QVC and how great their customer service was for her and her friends. Any organization that I feature here in theLeaderMaker.com is one in which I have personal experience with at some level, although in this case less so. Since so many have told me so… Read More »
[February 1, 2016] The published core values of any organization tells us a lot about the thinking of its senior leadership. With some analysis we can see if they will have difficulty in achieving their mission or not. Today, I’ll be highlighting the American Library Association (ALA) and their official core values. The ALA is an old organization,… Read More »
[December 30, 2015] Shopping this past month for Christmas and birthday gifts provided amble time for me to observe both good and bad small business practices in action. It also gave me a snapshot of their core values and whether their employees understood and practiced those values in serving customers. Any business that survives for more than a… Read More »
[September 25, 2015] George, a good friend of mine from our past army days, used to tell me often that, “I never drink good coffee because I might like it and then have to pay for it.” You see, in U.S. Army dining facilities and in our offices, coffee is most often found hot and free. Later, after… Read More »
[August 27, 2015] Texas A&M University is the first academic organization I’ve featured here under core values. The reason has everything to do with the fact that college-level organizations rarely have their core values advertised, if they have them at all. None that I attended had core values at the time and no one I know could recall… Read More »
[July 31, 2015] If there is one thing that I’ve learned as a senior leader it’s that the best predictor of success in leaders is how those adults fared as children – did they grow up in a stable family and have the right experiences? Many leaders have begun to emphasize the importance of developing certain characteristics in… Read More »
[June 28, 2015] I’ve often written about how an organization’s core values help drive the conduct of its people and its external relationships with customers and stakeholders. Many examples were offered to help illustrate this fundamental fact about organizational behavior. Today, I will depart somewhat from my earlier format to bring forward an example of a more controversial,… Read More »
[May 10, 2015] Just last night I completed reading E.B. Sledge’s book With the Old Breed about his service as a United States Marine Corps private during World War II. In his personal memoir, Private Sledge writes about the devastation of war on his Marine comrades and on the local civilian population. He notes in particular how important… Read More »
[April 24, 2015] One of the greater insights into management concepts over the past century was that rules cannot be created to cover everything in the workplace. The study of human psychology says that we all live and act according to values we hold most cherished. It follows logically that if we can clearly identify those the most… Read More »
[March 08, 2015] During my three years in Iraq as a U.S. Army engineer, I was exposed almost daily to KBR personnel who provided engineering and logistical support to the U.S. military. Without the capability provided by this firm, the military could not have operated at the level that U.S. and Coalition did to attack insurgent and terrorist… Read More »