“Listening is a crucial skill. You’ve heard that so often that it has become a platitude. I’m sad about that because… well… because listening is a crucial skill. Crucial for what? If you want to unstick a stuck conversation, you will need to listen well enough to understand what the other person is saying. If you want to respond to resistance, or to resolve a conflict that involves a significant emotional component ó and nearly all conflicts do ó you will need to listen for the other person’s motivations. If you want to maintain or strengthen or repair a relationship, you will need to listen for the other person’s feelings and needs.”

“Laurent Bossavit’s weblog: You’re in a maze of twisty little decisions, all alike. You’re in a maze of twisty little decisions, all different.”

“This Focused Performance Weblog is a “business management blog” containing links and commentary related primarily to organizational effectiveness with a ‘Theory of Constraints’ perspective. TOC is noted for its applications in Project and Multi-Project Management (Critical Chain) and Operations Management (Drum-Buffer-Rope), as well as in Marketing, Strategic Planning and Change Management (TOC Thinking Processes).”

“When it comes to workers, companies can be accused of not paying enough ó or paying too much. Wal-Mart Stores Inc.’s parsimonious approach to employee compensation has made the world’s largest retailer a frequent target of labor unions and even Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, who has accused the Bentonville, Ark., chain of failing to offer its employees affordable health-care coverage. In contrast, rival Costco Wholesale Corp. often is held up as a retailer that does it right, paying well and offering generous benefits. But Costco’s kind-hearted philosophy toward its 100,000 cashiers, shelf-stockers and other workers is drawing criticism from Wall Street. Some analysts and investors contend that the Issaquah, Wash., warehouse-club operator actually is too good to employees, with Costco shareholders suffering as a result.”

“Most companies remain stymied by the challenges of optimizing complexity ó managing the trade-off between customersí demands for variety in products and services, and the ballooning costs of meeting those needs. Firms tend to add complexity to their product or service mix for one of two reasons: to create value for a customer segment, or in response to competitive activity. But because they often donít refresh their ‘participation choices’ ó the decisions about the markets they serve and the ways they serve them ó companies can lose sight of the true value of a customer segment and the cost impact of the programs they develop. They donít target customer needs well enough to provide products and services that either are true ‘order winners’ ó offerings that set one company apart from another in the quest for customers ó or provide continuing value to existing customers.”

“CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. It is a strategy used to learn more about customers’ needs and behaviors in order to develop stronger relationships with them. After all, good customer relationships are at the heart of business success. There are many technological components to CRM, but thinking about CRM in primarily technological terms is a mistake. The more useful way to think about CRM is as a process that will help bring together lots of pieces of information about customers, sales, marketing effectiveness, responsiveness and market trends.”

“Below the boiling political rhetoric, a real threat America’s workers face is the potential for U.S. wages to sink to overseas levels.”

“Don’t let things fall apart with your spouse or partner while you’re looking for a new gig. Your situation affects them, too.”

“Effective sales consultants invest much time and effort into developing and nurturing their sales leads and customers. The very nature of their job description renders this group competitive and somewhat territorial. The variety of systems and approaches they use to uncover, store and recall information on customers and prospects is almost as broad as their sales styles.”

“How many of Americaís 20 million plus start-ups and small businesses run their businesses in order to attract venture capital and investment bankers? Rather than customers, partners and opportunity? How much time and how many competitive cycles are wasted following the wrong doctrine? How many precious resources and opportunities are wasted building the wrong formations, creating the wrong relationships, hiring the wrong people and pursuing the wrong dream?”

“In the March edition of her email newsletter High-Per Hints, Ellyn Traub considers the impact ‘followers’ have on leadership within an organization. FC Now readers have challenged the notion of followers within companies before, but Traub offers some interesting ideas.”

“The idea for the BBBT came from Kevin Smolker and his Virtual Book Tour. Kevin (who got the original idea from Ben Brown at So New Media) has been hosting book tours for some time. His motivation was to connect weblogging with publishing. He wanted to connect readers with good books. Kevin’s tours focus on literary fiction and narrative non-fiction. We want to do the same thing, but with business titles.”

“Projects@Work is the only business-to-business magazine of its kind, written for professionals with front-line responsibility for project management. Published bimonthly, Projects@Work presents case studies, practical information and applications, product updates and news.”

“Welcome! We hope you fill find this resource guide useful in evaluating and tracking the various sites and software tools you can use to grow your network of business relationships.”

“Thomas Davenport has helped midwife some of the biggest trends to have shaped business over the past 25 years ó†among them, reengineering and knowledge management. Now he’s asking: Where do ideas come from? And how do they get traction? Here’s his eight-point plan for winning with ideas.”