The Practical Leader
Practical Leadership and Management Tools

  • Delightful Dell Service Shows a Real Turnaround
    Sometimes it feels like our technology picks the toughest time to test us! I was on the Calgary leg of a road trip to Regina, Calgary, Seattle, and Anchorage a few weeks ago when my computer failed to boot up as I arrived at my hotel room that night. I live on this thing. I [...]

  • American Express Boosts Customer Service with Transformed Leadership and Culture
    Just after writing my last blog on improving customer service by treating your employees better I came across an interview on Jim Bush, EVP of World Service, at American Express. The new leadership approach Jim describes Amex has used since he took charge of this role in 2005 provides powerful data and examples of how [...]

  • Want to Improve Customer Service – Treat Your Employees Better
    This is the title of a recent report in the University of Pennsylvania newsletter Knowledge @ Wharton. Part of the article reports on “a recent study conducted by Marshall Fisher, a professor of operations and information management at Wharton, and other colleagues.” He goes on to show how one of the keys to improving customer [...]

  • We Need to Apply Quality Improvement Lessons to Safety
    As I fine tune next week’s Leadership and Culture Development for Higher Health and Safety  webcast presentation, I’ve been reflecting on the lessons learned from the quality movement and the widespread failure to apply those to workplace safety. Starting in the late eighties and eventually morphing into Lean/Six Sigma, the quality movement completely revolutionized management [...]

  • Vision, Values, and Mission: Well Lived Trumps Well Written
    In preparation for an offsite executive team retreat, the executive organizing the session sent me a draft of the mission and vision statements “we’ve been struggling with.” She included earlier versions and iterations of each statement. She was especially frustrated and confused by the overlap of the two. She was looking for my help to [...]

Testimonials
“Excellent overview of key principles. It makes you want to dive in and learn about all of them!” —Pushp Arora, Lean Practitioner, RIM Research in Motion
“Excellent, thought-provoking, life changing course.” —Renee Laforet, Ministry of Health & Long-Term Care
“Excellent overview of key principles. It makes you want to dive in and learn about all of them!” —Pushp Arora, Lean Practitioner, RIM Research in Motion