Executive Management and Organizational Development:

Reducing Customer Burden for Higher Sales Every Company Puts Obstacles in Their Customers' Paths. Do You Know Yours? "Burden" is EVERYTHING a customer has to do to find, buy and then implement your product or service.  In some businesses this involves many steps.  In the most successful businesses it is well streamlined from the customer's perspective.  Every call needed, meeting needed, com…Read More

Is Customer Service Dead Or Just Dying? Plus the Top 8 Ways To Insure Your Customer Service Is Not! By Bob Norton Where Are Your Company's Customers Now? Only in the top right "Loyalty" is a sustainable business, everywhere else is living on borrowed time. Examples of Poor Customer Service Customer service seems to be going down the drain today at more companies than not. It is difficult to have a…Read More

A Powerful Yet Simple Framework  for Employee Development Expectations For Climbing The Corporate Ladder By Bob Norton It is the goal of all quality organizations to provide its employees with a superior opportunity to grow, both individually and as professionals. Nothing has greater impact than hiring the right people and having them develop simultaneously with the company’s own growth. It has…Read More

A mini-series on practical leadership focus for start-ups and emerging growth company senior executives This is the first of a 5-part special series This series will explore how leadership focus and skills must evolve as a company grows from a raw startup to an expansion stage successful enterprise.  Most seminars, texts and articles talk about leadership generically as if it had the same require…Read More

The Bigger Picture Annual Planning Process By Bob Norton Hopefully you have already read my article or book chapter on Management By Objective and learned about managing individuals and departments to monthly goals. If you have not it is recommended, but not required, to understand this piece. This chapter is really the next level “up” in terms of developing a more strategic annual plan.  I…Read More

A Time Tested Management Method Classic That Works – With the Right People By Bob Norton Management by Objective (MBO) is the basic “blocking and tackling” of management.  It is simple, effective and can be used to some degree with most people who have some capability for forethought.  Unfortunately this is not everyone. Here is a simple step-by-step description of how to use this powerful…Read More

Lead Your Way Out! By Harvy Simkovits   Are you starting the new year over-extended, over-committed, overwhelmed and over-stressed in your business? Maybe you suffer from being under-leveraged as a leader! "Too much to do and not enough time" is a common mantra for most business owners. Too many demands and expectations from customers, employees, vendors (even consultants), not to mention y…Read More

The 11 Required Elements of A Successful Vision By Bob Norton What is a Vision? There is a lot of talk about maintaining a vision, especially as part of a CEO's job. In my opinion, vision is one of those terms that is both greatly overused and largely misunderstood. Many people consider vision to be an all encompassing view of the product, others will expand it’s meaning to include the entire ma…Read More

How to Manage Employees At Varied Levels of Experience By Bob Norton   There are far too many texts and systems on management and I do not want to create another.  However, there is a simple and effective system I use that leverages many of these wonderful systems that can be anywhere from fantastic to disastrous in a particular situation.  In every case some thought must be given to which tech…Read More

HA Method For Evaluating And Managing the Risks of A Business Developed by Bob Norton Too often, managers focus solely on the probability of a risk or problem happening and ignore far more important factors such as the cost of failure and the ability to actively manage each risk as more is learned. To properly manage a business risks must be evaluated and monitored constantly. Steps can usually be…Read More