Notes on Noble Business

This recession is teaching us once again about the trade-off between people and profits. While companies scramble to get through financially – by postponing investments, cutting costs and managing cash, it’s important to keep the other resources healthy too. Thus a recession is a great environment for learning how to manage finances AND manage the human resource and customer relationship dimension optimally.

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While many companies still remain almost “locked down” with a clamp on spending, waiting for the economy to recover, now may actually be just the time for you and your company to shift into action. Those who act early will seize an opportunity caused in part by the economy’s having stopped its free fall – and also by the fact that many competitors may still be essentially dormant, just waiting until it becomes (truly) “safe” to resume “business as usual.”

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Last week I had the privilege and pleasure of speaking to a group of 35 mid-level executives enrolled in Fordham Business School’s Accelerated Executive MBA program, which is rated in the top 30 executive MBA programs in the world by The Wall Street Journal.

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A few months ago, I asked several dozen business owners and executives just that question. Some reported that their companies were growing and prosperous. Others said their companies were stagnant, and a sizable number reported that their companies were declining and/or not profitable. If your business is in any of those three categories, you may be interested to learn what each group described as their biggest challenges. As you might expect, the challenge of coming up with a better business strategy and how to improve its implementation ranked high. But what I found most interesting was that there were also quite a few mentions about the challenges related to the human side of the business. You may be surprised by what specific challenges they cited.

Read the summary of the business challenge survey results.>>

In its August 25^th issue on “Trouble at the Office”, Business Week reports on how nearly 4,000 readers identified their biggest concerns about their work and provided their own answers for how to deal with those concerns. I was particularly struck by the ways people found to fight bureaucracy, deal with toxic bosses – and stay creative – not merely to make their own work lives more tolerable, but to help their companies succeed despite these problems. (more…)

How can you differentiate your company to put it on the path toward competitive advantage and sustainable business success? That’s the subject I recently talked about with Chip Conley, founder & CEO of Joie De Vivre Hospitality and author of PEAK: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo.

The old answers and approaches are no longer enough. As Chip put it, “One of the things that companies are looking for is how to differentiate themselves, and companies that succeed do not tend to do so by following the pack. So one of the most important elements of successful or peak-performing businesses is how you differentiate yourself.” (more…)

Underlying all the challenges that business owners and CEOs face is the basic question of how do you turn your company into the industry leader? (Or, if it’s already there, how do you keep it there?) For if you can make your company the best in the business, then you will enjoy sustainable growth and high profitability. (more…)

In shaping a new business model, I came smack up against some very ingrained beliefs about the underlying economics of the business firm. Ones that, upon closer scrutiny, just didn’t ring true, and certainly didn’t seem to help executives manage the firm effectively. (more…)

Here I go, starting a blog – something I’ve never done before, but here goes….

I recently came back from the World Premiere of the Noble Enterprise seminar at the Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis, and it was a very affirming experience. But more about that in a later post. (more…)