Episodes

Today’s business leaders face several challenges, and they all did not just start with the pandemic, but they are not alone. For hundreds of years, our military leaders have been facing challenges even more significant than those we face today. So the question we pose in this episode, what can we learn from our military leaders. In Part I of this three-part series, we look at history and one of the US’s most important Civil War battles, Gettysburg. We use this battle to teach us some essential l...

In business and life, we sometimes have the inability to fully understand and tackle human emotions, impacting our behavior, especially in business. As leaders, we should exemplify the kind of behavior we want in our organizations, and without both emotional & social intelligence, we cannot do that. We need both emotional and social intelligence to make decisions, manage stress and set examples for others. We need to know and understand our own emotional state to impactfully lead others. In this...

For the last two decades, there has been a shift in how we hire and retain employees. This shift primarily began with the entrance of the millenniums into the workforce and then there was another shift as Gen Z made their appearance. At the same time, technology in the workplace has allowed organizations to reimagine the way they work and manage talent. One of the most impactful changes has been how technology allows companies to screen and hire employees no matter where they are located. It als...

On December 31, 1999, the world was in a panic related to the formatting and storage of calendar data for 2000. Even though we had years to prepare for this, we still waited until the last minute, and 21 years later, there is another panic. Businesses are wondering what will happen when Google changes to mobile-first indexing on March 31, 2021. They are also wondering what will happen when the core values for website ranking changes in May. Businesses’ need to prepare themselves, but they have h...

Change happens every day, it is a constant and transitions are inevitable, but some of us bare better than others when it comes to change. Many people spend a great deal of time and energy trying to avoid change, but you cannot run away from change, it will catch up with you. Look what happened at the beginning of the panic, that was change that none of us could run away from this kind of change. Some kinds of changes are controllable, and some are not. If you can learn to cope with change, you’...

Who is the most exciting person in the room when you’re at a networking event or a social outing? Simple, it’s whoever has the most unique and insightful stories to tell. It’s all about content, and content marketing is built on the same principle. By seeking to answer the unanswered questions or provide unique insights into complex problems, great content captivates an audience and sparks meaningful conversations. Content marketing can do the same thing; it can spark engagement between your bra...

There are a lot of podcasts talking about what enterprise as well as small businesses should do to keep their businesses floating during the pandemic, but not a lot of them talk about how to plan now for the recovery and comeback. Only a few brands, retailers and local businesses are managing to sufficiently compensate the loss of offline revenue with online sales. They have basically but their businesses into hibernation, but now with the light at the end of the tunnel, it is time to plan the c...

Small businesses have a lot to gain by implementing digital transformation. “Going digital” can help business owners develop productive and cost-effective workflows, reduce administrative overhead, and unlock growth opportunities. However, many small business owners find it challenging to embrace digital transformation. It’s not that they don’t want to - it’s just that many of them find that technological solutions aren’t as accessible as they hoped, and that the intimidating knowledge gap can b...

As usual, brands must consider their target audience when developing their messages, and this expectation is intensifying as consumers place greater emphasis on brands' actions. People relate to positive messages around social issues such as the environment, coronavirus safety, and systemic racism; therefore, how a business or brand positions itself can impact consumer loyalty. It essential for businesses and brands to recognize diverse cultures and different values. We all have unconscious bias...

B2C deals directly with the end consumer and the end consumer operate on emotions. B2B deals with companies, and they mostly use logic. There are apparent differences in how B2C and B2B companies engage, interact with, and serve their customer bases. Still, when consumer expectations rise in B2C companies, the B2B companies need to step up. End consumer expectations have risen over the past years, and since March 2020, they have exploded. The customer journey is no longer linear. It is 360-degre...

History shows that crises can be startup incubators. Some of today’s biggest companies were founded during and shortly after the 2008 economic crisis, including Uber, Credit Karma, Slack, WhatsApp and Groupon. But crisis or no crisis, launching a start-up is a challenge. From limited resources to just knowing what to do, many ideas are never realized and fall apart before the business gets off the ground. But there are lessons to learn from both start-up failures and from those start-ups that su...

Time is the most precious resource we have because once it is gone you can't get it back and many times we only realize this when it is too late. Today we live in such a superficial world, where we often value money much more than time. Being busy is seen as being successful. Our jobs consume us, leaving us very little time to focus on our families and ourselves. When we talk about time management we often focus on how we manage our workflow in the office, but not how we manage our lives. We tal...

The recent announcement of a massive computer breach that allowed hackers to exploit numerous US government agencies left the US government and the world in shock. The hackers attached malware to a software update which gave them access to government networks and private company systems, putting infrastructures, data, operations and priority information at risk. But this is not the only attack we have seen since the beginning of the pandemic. Chris Versace estimates that in the first 100 days of...

Leaders todays are asking everyone to make sacrifices and if there is one group of people whom you would expect to be provide great examples in a crisis, it would be a leader. , It does not matter if it is the shift manager at McDonald's or the President of a country, we all have certain expectations of leadership and how leaders meet our expectations is critical, especially right now. But to meet our expectations, leaders first need to understand what leadership is about and in confusing times ...

As we dive deeper into the virtual world and consumer behavior is more online than offline, digital marketing is becoming more and more important. At the same time, marketing expectations are placing new pressures on agencies and marketers who try to ensure their customers are found among the sea of digital advertising. Marketers are frequently expected to produce online miracles like getting customers ranked on the top search machines or making sure their pop-ups are enticing enough to earn a c...

COVID-19 has impacted our healthcare systems, in both positive and negative ways. The challenging strain we have felt on our healthcare infrastructure has very often masked the positive impacts the pandemic has had on medical technology advancements, and artificial intelligence has moved to the forefront. The application of AI across healthcare networks and in medical devices is helping us improve systems that perform tasks normally requiring human intelligence. It is giving us the bandwidth to ...

COVID will be remembered as a time of tremendous upheaval and change. One that extends across industries and economies, as well as social and political structures and the impact, will be felt for at least a decade if not a generation or more. COVID has changed how we communicate, how we behave and also how we consume. If you have to point to one phenomenon that characterizes the COVID-consumer experience, it’s e-commerce. Online shopping grew in the US and Europe by triple digits during the lock...

As the Coronavirus Escalates we are being asked to download tracking and tracking apps, fill out papers with personal information and supply our data to multiple organizations. At the same time, we are seeing a surge e-commerce. We are buying more online which ultimately leaves it easier for companies to target us online. In general, our personal data is in more places today than it was before the pandemic, while cybercrime has ramped up amid this crisis. Working from home, multiple platforms us...

Over the last months we have sometimes witnessed the clashes of values and beliefs and many of them have revolved around our views concerning gender and roles. I heard an interview from a US voter, who clearly said that women do not belong in the White House, while at the same time political discussions concerning wage equality, the validity Roe vs Wade and many other gender issues are always in the media. But it seems that most of the discussions revolve around women, leaving the question, what...

Growing up, it was a Sunday tradition that my Dad would get up in the morning and go get a dozen Dunkin’ Donuts . We could each pick one kind for ourselves, and the rest was a surprise mix. My brother always took the Jelly Stick ( with the illusion it was bigger ), my mother the chocolate glazed, and I always picked the mysterious Butternut. Back then, I thought Dunkin’ Donuts was a neighborhood shop, our local donut shop, because the brand blended so well into our neighborhood. It was years lat...

Holiday parties, mistletoe, lighting the Menorah, 3 King Celebrations, children sitting on Santa’s Lap or just meeting a group of friends in the pub for a pint are memories of holidays past as we adjust to 2020’s new reality. Typically, December is a time of traditions, and part of its charm is knowing what’s coming every year, but this year will be different. The torrent of shoppers in the run-up to the Holidays has been around as long as Holiday Glitter, but many long-standing traditions, are ...

Prominent business disasters such as the collapse of Enron and Northern Rock, to such devastating events as the BP Texas City oil refinery explosion, are very often blamed on Company Boards and Governance. But many of these disasters happened in times that were not as turbulent as they are today. A recent report done by Deloitte on the challenges of Boards, states that “The way in which Boards do their work at this time will be a critical factor in an organization’s ability to emerge from the cu...

Companies today should have plans to grow their businesses while increasing sales and profits, but there is more than one way to do this. Some growth strategies include market penetration, market development, product development, diversification and even acquisitions. But all of these strategies require a full understanding of how a business is currently performing and then identifying the right strategy to move forward. This is because a growth strategy involves more than simply envisioning lon...

All business planning begins and ends with the sales forecast, and sales is a hard job. Not too many Years ago prospective buyers had limited access to buyer-related information and relied on salespeople to provide the information they needed. And then the world changed, buyers became more empowered. All of a sudden buyers became digitally savvy and had access to a wealth of information. A lot of them actually tried to avoid interacting with a salesperson, until absolutely necessary. And just as...