Copyright Glynis Ross-Munro
To what extent does your business think innovatively, then execute and deliver real value? The key to success in the current economy is not about selling the same item or service for a few cents less than your competitor, it’s about changing the game. And then changing it some more. Whenever you want to. Because you can.
Imagine: On vacation, you log on to a website, and check on your pet. There are vidcams in the pet boarding facility, so you can watch your pet eating, sleeping, being groomed or exercising. You happily pay a premium fee to a business that provides both pet lodging and peace of mind. This business has delivered value through strategic thought, innovation and specialty skills.
Consider five more examples, each using strategic thought and insight into the way that customers perceive value: Continue reading »
Ansgar Gabrielsen, a male Norwegian businessman and politician, is an expert on the details of a 2007 Catalyst study, The Bottom Line: Corporate Performance & Women’s Representation on Boards,
Gabrielsen’s focus has not been on gender equality. His interest is in “the fact that diversity is a value in itself, that it creates wealth.” He is part of a movement has led to a law that requires all listed Norwegian companies to have at least 40% of women on their boards.
Despite much outcry about the law, research findings show that companies with the highest representation of women on their top management teams perform better financially than groups with the lowest female representation. The Norwegians have therefore made diversification mandatory, on the basis that increased profits can be, and are, achieved through diverse boards, and that a company’s primary responsibility is to act in the best interests of its shareholders by maximizing profits.
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Tags: Boards, Collaboration, diversity, management, Norway, profitability, women
Care for You Business, Care for All Resources
Businesses face soaring energy, operating and facilities costs. The State of Florida struggles with water shortages, damage to Florida’s fragile ecosystem, and the threat of climate change to our low-lying state. Sustainability issues threaten our entire world, economically and environmentally.
The research is conclusive. Green attitudes, thinking and actions are measurably profitable, and have multiple benefits such as employee engagement, process innovation, gains in brand and company reputation, and positive share performance. Continue reading »
Tags: attitudes, brand, employee buy-in, energy-efficient, environment, environmentally-friendly, green, green families, green homes, green workplaces, immersion learning, innovation, interactive training, International Business, reputation, sustainability, sustainable transit, sustainable transport
Third Prize: A self-sustaining system for monitoring your corporate information security and privacy on the Internet.
Second Prize: Engaged staff, increased retention, teamwork and trust.
First Prize: A long-term, company-wide culture of awareness of the importance of respecting and protecting corporate information. Employee-driven emphasis on its role in trust-based business relationships, legal obligations to business partners, competitive advantage etc.
In CPS’s Managing Millennials workshop, we suggest many ways to give your Generation Ys some variety in their work, to engage their interest and loyalty, and to offer some outlet for their creative minds, as they focus on routine tasks. Most of these suggestions leverage their technological and generational-specific skills, for the well-being of the organization.
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Tags: confidentiality, corporate security, Culture, engagement, Generation Y, innovation, leaks, milliennials, ning, retention, security, social networking, technology
Save the date, or sponsor a workshop at IBS:
Benefits of IBS Involvement:
IBS is about networking: It connects people with new contacts, and builds relationships and trust. The structured speed-networking is particularly popular.
IBS is about visibility: sponsors and networkers come to IBS to define their brands, and promote products and services to potential clients. IBS offers a specific opportunity for sales and marketing to the diverse, international, and multi-lingual community. The Collaboration, Diversity, Prosperity Awards highlight achievements by innovative and inclusive companies in our region.
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Tags: International Business Summit
The following article, by Glynis Ross-Munro, was published in the Summer 2009 edition of The Woman Advocate, Vol. 14, No. 4,by the American Bar Association. Copyright is shared with the author.
Glynis is President of Competency and Performance Solutions, a Tampa-based consultancy that assists firms with generational differences, collaborative thinking skills, culture and inclusiveness. She has been married to a lawyer for 33 years.
The success of a legal team depends on collaboration and teamwork. In the current workplace, that means solid communication between four generations of professional and support staff, clients, business partners, witnesses and others. This is no easy task. Continue reading »
Tags: Boomers, communication, Culture, Generation Jones, Generation X, Generation Y, generations, Matures, Millennials, Traditionals
Culture (I tell participants) is like an iceberg. You see the part that sticks up about the water, but below the surface is the real bulk. The thing you are most likely to crash into is that unseen, unsuspected mass.
The aquatic metaphor is also apt. We swim in our culture, so like fish we do not notice it. It is the water that surrounds us, and we cease to analyze it. It is simply the environment in which we live.
The other common image of culture is the onion. Our daily lives are framed by layers upon layers of unseen assumptions and mind-sets. Because we have no other way of conceptualizing our world, we see it through our ‘normal’ perspective, seldom imagining different interpretations, until some rather dramatic event gives us new eyes. Or until we choose to study a subject like Anthropology, to help us see that many things are hiding, in plain sight, right in front of us.
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Tags: Add new tag, competitiveness, Culture, CultureGPS, ethics, Hofstede, new econnomy, Trompenaars, wealth
Competency & Performance is delivering new insights into the interactions between thinking skills, social and emotional intelligence, technological intelligence, and collaborative intelligence.
We build:
1) Our clients’ “IQ”, or conscious abilities to use a toolbox of various thinking skills, alone and with other people.
2) EQ or social and emotional intelligence: the competencies in the intrapersonal, interpersonal, cultural and communication skillls.
3) “TQ” or technological intelligence, the group of skills, knowledge and attitudes that are an essential part of managing information sharing, and executing collaborative work in the technology-based Age of Knowledge. Continue reading »
Tags: collaborative intelligence, emotional intelligence, EQ, social intelligence, technological intelligence, thinking skills
First there was IQ, then emotional intelligence. Studies show that EQ still beats IQ as a factor in business success, but now there is a new predictor for business that win, people that succeed, and economic achievement.
CQ, or collaborative intelligence, combines the ability to think well, and to think collaboratively with other people. It is a key to innovation, corporate earnings, individual wealth and national success in the 21st Century. Continue reading »
Tags: Collaboration, collaborative intelligence, cq, knowledge workers, The New Economy, thinking
Corruption and ‘mismanagement”. Madoff defrauds charities of billions. The mayor of Baltimore has apparently gone on a shopping spree with gift cards donated for the poor. Millions of dollars are missing in Iraq, banks refuse to report what they have done with billions in public money. You can go further back – the Katrina frauds, or Enron: pick a story, pick a year, pick an amount.
Yet they are all one story. Someone, somewhere is saying “me! give me more… and more… and more”. There is a never-ending stream of takers, hands stretched out for more. Often, when the accounting is done, the hands belong to people who own more houses than they can live in, more cars than they can drive, more clothes than they can wear… but they want more. Continue reading »
Tags: Collaboration, collaborative thinking, ethics, Prosperity
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