Quick trivia: from what movie does the line “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!” come?  No Internet – no cheating!  Anyone??  It comes from the 1976 movie, The Network.  Winner of four Academy Awards and with an all-star cast, The Network is a satirical film about a struggling [...]

Strategy requires making choices about the future. But here’s the problem: most humans (and therefore most organizations) are actually fairly bad at predicting the future!  (Remember the now infamous prediction by IBM that the worldwide market for PCs was about four?!)  Why?  Because, well, the future is uncertain!  There are numerous variables, each acting on [...]

Leadership matters.  It’s what separates the good organizations from the bad and the great organizations from the good.  Good leadership is critical for optimizing resources, maximizing employee engagement, aligning organizational activities, and achieving and sustaining high performance.  In fact, research shows that leadership is the number one driver of superior organizational outcomes.  Or, said another way: without good leadership, [...]

St. Paul, September 9, 2019 -- The need to improve your organization’s performance has perhaps never been greater: there are early signs that the economy is tightening; customers expect more; competent workers are scarce; and competition is intensifying in many industries.  But -- with the complexity of organizations -- where does one start?  How do [...]

So my wife and I refinanced our house earlier this summer (as I’m now fond of saying: “I liked our house so much, I purchased it three times!”) – the low rates were just too appealing and the last time we refinanced was 15 years ago, so we dropped the rate by about 2%.  At [...]

A Wall Street Journal article from a couple of years ago captured the challenges most organizations face in trying to be innovative.  Authors Drew Boyd (a former J&J executive and current professor at University of Cincinnati) and Jacob Goldenberg (a professor at Hebrew and Columbia University and author of “Inside the Box: A Proven of [...]

I get asked occasionally what is the single biggest reason organizations fail.  Of course, there isn’t one right answer: organizations – even from the same sector or industry – have different cultures, different core competencies, different strategic challenges and advantages, different circumstances that contribute to success or failure.  As a result, some organizations struggle with [...]

Excellence is a choice.  It’s the result of intentional, humble and visionary leadership; systematic evaluation and improvement that leads to meaningful change; and capable, motivated, and fully engaged employees.  It doesn’t happen by accident – at least not for long.  It requires data-based decisions; true organizational alignment that optimizes resources and harmonizes on mission, strategy, [...]

2018 Performance Excellence Awards Presented at PENworks 2019 Conference ST. PAUL, Minn., May 6, 2019 – The Performance Excellence Network (PEN) honors two recipients of the 2018 Performance Excellence Award.  The Award is based on the Baldrige Framework and is the culmination of a rigorous evaluation of an organization’s management and performance system.  The evaluation [...]