Category: Archive

The Greatest Challenges the Consultant Faces

While there are few career paths that some would call perfect, being a consultant comes pretty close to having it all. Yet there are challenges and pitfalls that are sometimes overwhelming and unexpected. Whether it’s helping a client increase sales, improve efficiency, prevent a crisis or convince a client why a particular strategy might work, challenges are always to be faced. When analyzing, identifying and exploring the most specific challenges high on the consultant’s list, there are a few that would probably be considered the greatest of all. Following are some of those challenges and how a few successful consultants have overcome them.

Transforming Rank-Based into Peer-Based Organizations

Creating a peer-based organization does not mean you do away with management positions or management structure, work still needs to be managed. However, the governing, leadership choices in the four key decision-making areas of strategy, tactics, operations, and functional departments will be made, not by the self-similar elites, but by councils of peers drawn from every level and function. Indeed, today a higher consciousness is emerging in organizational thought that rejects rank as the chief way of organizing relationships. It is arising on the periphery, which has been the pattern for all evolutionary progress. Peer-based organizations will be successful and out compete traditional rank-based, hierarchic companies because individuals behave more responsibly, more intelligently, more strategically, and more cooperatively, than the same individuals would in traditional rank-based organizations.

10 Tips for Email Etiquette

E-mail is frequently written quickly and often poorly. The tips that follow should help you to write e-mail that will be well received every time.

1. Pay attention to punctuation, spelling, grammar and capitals.

how ofen do yoo receeve e-mail ritten like this!!!!!

Many e-mail messages contain poor spelling and grammar, incorrect use of capital letters and/or poor punctuation. Such messages look amateurish and inevitably produce a poor impression of the sender.

Successful ERP Implementation the First Time

It’s not pretty out there. Companies have spent fortunes on ERP software and implementation only to find that business performance has not improved at all. These large investments and negative ROIs have created a whirlpool of controversy, rampant company politics and even a number of lawsuits. The trade press has reported many negative ERP stories, and even annual reports have pointed the finger at ERP for lower-than-expected earnings. For some, this has created a higher level of fear about making a big ERP mistake.

What Makes A Great Web Design

When I was a young and inexperienced web designer, I was once asked what made a great web design. I blithely responded with something like “lots of cool graphics and moving objects!” I cringe when I remember this particularly dreadful moment in my life. My real concern, however, is with aspiring web designers today. I am an avid participant in online discussion forums and hear and deal with this issue plenty.

In Bed With the Enemy: How to Successfully Partner With Your Competition

Strategic alliances are today commonplace among large corporations. The advantages allow these companies to successfully compete in the global marketplace. Powerful synergies are the outcropping of these alliances. Smaller companies can derive the same advantages through alliance relationships. In this article, I will focus on what I call Synergistic Partnering Alliances where competitors can realize great value by building relationships of integrity with one another.

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