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Three Ways To Shoot Yourself In The Foot: Part III, The Consolidation Phase

By |2017-09-07T13:53:44+00:00September 7th, 2017|Categories: Uncategorized|

The consolidation phase that follows the Avalanche is tough on everyone. Your people are worried about keeping their jobs—and many of them are probably already looking elsewhere. You’ve tried to introduce new processes and patch your sagging IT, but nothing’s working the way it should. Morale has bottomed out. But look at it this way: Your business’s needs are pretty much the same during the consolidation phase that comes after an Avalanche as they were [...]

Three Ways To Shoot Yourself In The Foot, Part II: The Avalanche

By |2017-08-31T13:53:12+00:00August 31st, 2017|Categories: Uncategorized|

The Business Storm Cycle is never still; like all cycles, it’s constantly turning.  If you’ve weathered your first rapid-growth Tornado, in which your people and resources were stretched to the breaking point, you probably wondered when this crazy phase of expansion would stop. Now, as the Avalanche of shrinking margins and overstocked inventory hits, it has. As it turns out, it doesn’t matter all that much which side of the Business Storm Cycle you are [...]

Three Ways To Shoot Yourself In The Foot, Part I: In The Tornado

By |2017-08-24T14:00:13+00:00August 24th, 2017|Categories: Uncategorized|

No matter where you are in what I call the Business Storm Cycle, as a leader you’ve got to lead—even when the way ahead looks foggy. But even experienced leaders can be blindsided by what comes at them in the cycle—and can make mistakes that will make the phase they’re in that much rougher or even prove fatal to their business. If you’re hip-deep in the hypergrowth phase I call the Tornado, your company’s expansion [...]

Forget the Band-Aid…This Is Serious

By |2017-07-20T13:00:06+00:00July 20th, 2017|Categories: Uncategorized|

We’ve all seen the heartbreaking news photos of people standing in the rubble of their homes or places of business after a tornado has passed through. While the devastation wreaked on your enterprise by the Business Storm Cycle phase we call the Tornado – that period of hypergrowth and tumbling margins—is more fiscal than physical, it can leave you and your staff with that same sick feeling of having barely survived a disaster, wanting to [...]

Seasons And Cycles: They Just Keep Turning

By |2017-05-26T13:29:41+00:00May 26th, 2017|Categories: Business, Uncategorized|

One of the first cycles you learned about when you were a kid was probably the life cycle of a butterfly. You found an egg on a leaf, took it home with you, and put it in a jar. After a while, a caterpillar hatched out of the egg. It crawled around the leaf, nibbling on it, so you gave it more leaves to eat. Eventually, the caterpillar made a chrysalis. The chrysalis didn’t look [...]

Spring and the Tornado

By |2017-04-27T00:53:08+00:00April 27th, 2017|Categories: Uncategorized|

As the long, gray winter throws in the towel, at last, we’re treated to one of Nature’s finest shows – the arrival of spring – as the cycle of the seasons turns in its predictable and expected way. It’s always a thrill to see the flowers bursting up out of the ground along with the reappearance of butterflies as they come out of their chrysalises  – even though we know that winter will inevitably be [...]

Even the Big Guys Mess This Up

By |2016-10-05T23:21:58+00:00October 5th, 2016|Categories: Uncategorized|

Mistakes happen when you’re learning to ride out the ever-changing business cycle. In fact, most startup companies and divisions make the same ones. In the new product or acquisition phase, many departments get scant resources and little attention; unless they are doing something that actively hinders the growth product, they’re mostly ignored. This makes the people in those areas feel sidelined and left out. Resources and people may have been taken away from their departments [...]

How to Dig Out of an Avalanche

By |2016-09-29T09:58:12+00:00September 29th, 2016|Categories: Uncategorized|

With a title like that, you may be asking, “Is this going to be an adventure story?” Well, yes - and no. The kind of Avalanche I’m talking about doesn’t involve snow; it’s part of the life cycle of your business, but it can be nearly as overwhelming if you’re not ready for it. You’ve started a company, gone through the growing pains, and you’ve enjoyed a boom as your product or service took off [...]

Mastering the Business Cycle: Starting Out and Staying Airborne

By |2016-09-22T09:00:23+00:00September 22nd, 2016|Categories: Uncategorized|

Thinking in terms of cycles is a way human beings make sense out of life. Cycle Theory can be applied to just about every natural, social and historical concept there is, from world power cycles to international relations cycles to sociological and psychological cycles. What all these cycles have in common is that they form a circle that goes around and around, carried forward by a natural, ceaseless momentum - and they’re not easy to [...]

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This Is A Custom Widget

This Sliding Bar can be switched on or off in theme options, and can take any widget you throw at it or even fill it with your custom HTML Code. Its perfect for grabbing the attention of your viewers. Choose between 1, 2, 3 or 4 columns, set the background color, widget divider color, activate transparency, a top border or fully disable it on desktop and mobile.
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