Heard good advice on TV, CANE episode tonight. The patriarch of the family gave this advice to Jimmy Smits who he has put in charge of the business. “Learn to listen. People will say, ‘I shouldn’t be telling you this. But they tell you anyway. It’s one of the most commonly used phrases.’ Know as [...]

I’ve been out of the US for over a week now, and being out and about always changes or clarifies my viewpoint on the World. I ran into an interesting quote from the Dali Lama that I think pertains not just to politics, but to business as well. “Wars arise from the failure to understand [...]

We all need a little emotional boost from time to time.  I heard this on the radio yesterday. “Falling down is not failure.  STAYING DOWN is failure.” If you are down at the moment, GET UP.

Today in 1921 Jack Hutchinson became the first American to win the Open golf tournament in Britain. He was immediately signed by Chicago’s Wilson Sporting Goods, becoming the very first paid endorsement athlete.  The line of JH golf clubs was developed and introduced. What a trend that started.

The late Bear Bryant, the legendary football coach at Alabama was so confident in his coaching abilities he was quoted as saying, “I’ll take mine and beat your’n, or I’ll take your’n and beat mine.” He did not mean to imply that his players were not great, just that he would stack his coaching staff [...]

There is no such thing as the Sales Department. Everyone who succeeds is a salesman. If you start your own company, you are its principal sales representative until you reach such critical mass that key customers no longer care who you are. With certain products and services this happens only after millions in sales. In [...]

How important is INNOVATION? Drive through West Point, Georgia, and Lanette, Alabama, once mighty textile towns along the Ga/Ala border on the Chattahoochee River, once headquarters to West Point Pepperill, and notice the quiet of today’s moment. Mills everywhere. Absolutely none of them running. The scene is eerily like the shut down auto plants in [...]

I saw a diagram the other day that showed that RESULTS exist in the space between what you DEMAND and what you TOLERATE.  I think that there is some truth in this statement, but it is in conflict with our definition of leadership. We believe that a LEADER is someone whom others CHOOSE to FOLLOW.  [...]

Yesterday’s USA Today reminded us of the United snafoo during the Christmas holidays when they diverted two planes originally bound for Denver to Cheyenne, Wyoming, because of weather. Diversion for safety reasons of course is not a snafoo. However in United’s case, they stranded the passengers in Cheyenne the next morning and flew the empty [...]