A few years ago I wrote a series of posts with quotes about Performance Management (Feb 2009, Sept 2009, May 2010). Last week the Global Language Monitor announced that ‘404’ and ‘fail’ are the two most popular words of 2013. Given the popularity of failure, I thought I would catalog a few of my favorite quotes about…
I launched a new look-and-feel for my blog and I stopped writing. Ironic, isn’t it? The lack of new posts is one part writer’s block and one part overloaded schedule. For inspiration, I reread my own advice in Writing Better and was reminded of the fourth rule: learn from the masters. What do the greatest…
In the military, a force multiplier is a capability that significantly increases the potential of a combat force, enhancing the probability of a successful mission. Many CEOs are looking to marketing to assume the role of force multiplier across their organizations, using customer insights to influence business strategy. It’s an uphill battle. Most large organizations are designed…
You may have noticed things look a bit different around here. I am extraordinarily pleased to welcome you to JonathanBecher.com – the new home of my blog, “Manage by Walking Around.” I hope you enjoy the improved look and expanded functionality. Change presents opportunity but also comes with challenges. Some of you may have accidentally…
The 1993 HBR article ‘Customer Intimacy and Other Value Disciplines’ argued every company had to become champions of one of three value disciplines — operational excellence, customer intimacy, or product leadership. Since that book was published, virtually every business meeting I’ve been in has used at least one of these phrases to describe strategy. Value…
I’m behind in my reading. More than 30 unread books are sitting on my office shelves and another one joins their ranks almost every week. In an attempt to break the logjam I opened one somewhat randomly and read this intriguing claim: “You can personally choose to become more successful by adopting five learnable habits, which, in…
I enjoy writing. I believe words matter. When I’m asked how I have time to write, I sometimes snidely answer “How do you have time to watch TV?” I’ve shared writing advice from famous authors, including the very practical from George Orwell: If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out. and…
As soon as I finished reading Daniel Willingham’s fascinating book Why Don’t Students Like School?, I immediately put it on my list to blog about. Willingham, a psychologist at the University of Virginia, applies the principles of cognitive psychology to the world of education. Essentially, his goal is explain to teachers how their students’ brains…
When apparel retailer Gap releases a new clothing design, marketing analysts look to a key customer segment as an early indicator of the product’s popularity: the people who work in its stores. “Our employees are also our target audience, so we know quickly by those first-day employee purchases if we have a hit on our…
We always seem to be on a search for cause. In college my statistics professor’s favorite expression was “correlation does not imply causation.” In case you’re not familiar with the phrase, I’ll borrow the explanation I learned in school: When male college students wake up with a headache, a large percentage of the time they…