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Instant Customer Data Analysis using Excel: worked example

One of the most useful aspects of Microsoft Excel is its ability to quickly slice and dice customer data from live systems to identify important trends and behaviors which can inform strategy. In this article and screencast I share a 7-step plan, illustrated with a worked example, for Instant Customer Analytics using Excel.

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All you ever learned about meetings is wrong

I have been piloting a radically different approach to meetings which I am calling “Egoless Meetings” which addresses three popular unwritten rules about good meeting practices which are unfortunately totally wrong. RULE 1 is that everybody gets to speak. RULE 2 is that discussions in themselves can be useful. RULE 3 is that when you meet you must work as a team not as individuals.

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The 7 Secrets of High-Performing Teams: New Bioteams Video

In this new short audio/video I share 7 secrets on how teams can significantly improve performance by adopting simple techniques from Bioteams. These techniques are particularly relevant to large cross-functional teams and multi-enterprise teams whose members are not co-located and spend much of their working days on the road or on client site.

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Poor Mental Models fail teams before they even start?

One of the most powerful team exercises is to explore team leaders and team members “mental models” of teams, networks and groups. Mental models are the, often invisible, dictators of what actually happens in a team as opposed to what team leaders would like to happen. Here are some practical techniques for uncovering these “icebergs of the mind” before they sink your teams.

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How to have a meeting

I had a great chat on the good, the bad and the ugly of organizational meetings with Phil Daoust of The Guardian newspaper as part of a excellent in-depth article which appeared today in G2 (April 23) entitled “How to have a meeting”. Here are the online links to it:

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Mission Statement Generator by Dilbert

If, like me, you think that Company Mission Statements are often not worth the fancy cards they are embossed you should take a look at Dilbert’s Automatic Mission Statement Generator (unfortunately no longer available online). It looks like many of our major enterprises and public organizations have used it already!

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Simplexity: small causes yield huge effects

The way small causes yield huge effects is itself only one piece of the much grander idea of simplexity, a science that is increasingly being studied at universities and institutes around the world, but nowhere more intensely than at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico. No single unified rule governs all complex or simple systems, but there are a few big ones.

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The Virtually Networked Enterprise: Letting small fish act big

In How To Innovate And Create New Business Opportunities When You Are A Small Fish: Here Comes The VEN, Robin Good and Ken Thompson argue that when you are a small fish, it may appear pretty difficult, if not altogether out of your reach, to be able to “network up” with other small firms to provide higher value services to major clients. But is it a real physical limitation or is it just that small companies lack a proven and effective business collaboration model – The Virtual Enterprise Network (VEN)?

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When Rational People Make Irrational Choices

Ori Brafman introduces his forthcoming book, “Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior” by sharing a very sobering tale which illustrates how even the most trusted professionals (airline pilots) can depart wildly from the rational under certain pressure conditions.

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Seven team decision-making methods

The way a team decides to decide is one of the most important decisions it makes. In the excellent book, “Why Teams Don’t Work” the authors, Harvey Robbins and Michael Finley, identify seven key decision-making methods for teams.

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