It seems that fewer companies are training employees to deliver consistent customer experiences; instead, they seem just to be hoping that the people they hire will know what they are doing. While training anyone who deals with customers on the “company way” is not the only tool for...

When this quote by John Ruskin appeared on a recent LinkedIn post, it led me to think about the best approach for a business considering changing suppliers.  It’s unwise to pay too much, but it’s also unwise to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money,...

For many companies, properly staffing and retaining employees to meet their needs is a never-ending struggle. Let’s summarize what human resources gurus require years of training to understand and disseminate it to the masses for better results. Let us start by understanding some basic...

Willful blindness is the common practice of knowing that something is wrong, but either pretending that the problem does not exist, or being unwilling to make a change or even discuss the issue. I was inspired by a TED talk video about the willful blindness of the town residents of Libby,...

In the wood truss component industry, we have the independents, who are not associated with lumberyards, and then we have those who are owned by lumberyards. What I found striking is that the lumberyard owned and operated component manufacturers (CMs) consistently make far less money than the...

If you are like me, you spend the later part of the year setting goals for the coming year and planning how to accomplish them. For those who work for me, I always set goals, metrics, and participate in a conference on how we are going to achieve what we want together. Over the last few months,...