Managing Expectations

On Friday, I wrote about closing loops on everything—questions, requests, complaints, whatever. One thing that will make closing those loops much easier is by properly managing expectations.

This concept is one of the most important business lessons I have learned. It truly is a 360˚ method of management, because it goes up, down and [...]

Managing Staff

Whenever you enter a management position that includes managing a staff, there are two types of people you will manage: the people you hire and the people you inherit.

When it comes to hiring, you should have a pretty good idea of what you are looking for. That can create anxiety, especially if you’re new [...]

Paying Dues

There’s something to be said for paying your dues. It’s only right that we should have to go through all the same…um…stuff…that others have suffered before us. Much of the time.

When you’re building an organization, hoping to hire the best, you may not find the best senior-level people with all the industry-specific experience [...]

Human Rights and the Internet

Today, I’m taking a break from my normal brand management posts and joining Bloggers Unite in discussing human rights.
Growing up, I used to believe that we should not impose our own cultural biases on others’. To me, the issue was simple and straightforward: That’s what their world is like. If they don’t like [...]

Review of “Just Enough Anxiety”

I had the opportunity to read Just Enough Anxiety by Robert H. Rosen while traveling last week. It’s a thought-provoking book and a must-read for anyone in or aspiring to enter the management ranks.

What I liked about it:

It forces you to look in the mirror and consider your own anxiety issues (especially those that [...]

The Choices We Make

I know that I am exactly where I am because of certain choices I have made. Some of those I can trace back nearly 20 years. Certainly others’ choices have factored into it. But how I chose to respond, behave and act put me on one path or another.

The same is true [...]

Both Sides of Your Noggin

True success in brand management requires you to use both sides of your brain, often moving imperceptively from hard number analysis to creative conceptualization and everywhere in between. That’s because you must understand every aspect of your business, how all the pieces fit together and function as a whole.

It takes recognizing which investments will [...]

Profiling for Talent

In a meeting I had with a client yesterday, we discussed two different ways to drive his business forward. Through that discussion, we also identified a pretty good psychographic profile of his clients (he’s in the service industry).

The reason the profile works so well for him—even though it just sort of happened that way—was [...]

Citizen Brand Managers?

Businesses rely on their customers for long-term success. I know that is a pretty obvious statement. In this post, though, I want to discuss the manner in which we rely on them, beyond the need for customers to buy our stuff.

News outlets use citizen journalists for different story angles and helping fill in [...]

Measuring Your Performance

Measuring your brand’s performance from a marketing standpoint is difficult at best. Part of the reason, as I wrote before, is what I call the time to gratification. As marketers, we generate content, distribute it to our audiences and wait. Sometimes, we’ll see immediate results. Other times, however, it may take [...]