Managing change and the art of change management. Find out the best lessons learned in managing change from one of the world’s leading experts.

Keep virtuous cycles going and abort vicious cycles early. The little wins each day keep you going and add up over time. The same is true of setbacks.

You can dramatically shape a positive inner work life if you know what the key catalysts are. Catalysts are powerful ways to influence a positive inner work life. When people have a positive inner work life, they are more creative and productive.

This is a guest post from Neil Senturia on his lessons learned as an entrepreneur. Neil is the current CEO of Blackbird Ventures and the author of I’m There For You, Baby; The Entrepreneur s Guide to the Galaxy.

“Humanities greatest advances are not in its discoveries, but in how those discoveries are applied to reduce inequity.” – Bill Gates

Passion, intensity, and tenacity. That’s one way to describe Bill Gates.

“It doesn’t really matter how fast you’re going if you’re heading in the wrong direction.” — Stephen Covey

It’s a new year and a fresh start. Now is a perfectly good time to establish what’s important for you or chart a new course.

“The conventional definition of management is getting work done through people, but real management is developing people through work.” — Agha Hasan Abedi

I finished my new list of insightful Management Books. It’s a collection of my favorite and noteworthy management books.

“What do you want to achieve or avoid? The answers to this question are objectives. How will you go about achieving your desire results? The answer to this you can call strategy.” — By William E Rothschild
How do you create effective objectives?  Effective objectives are not straightjackets.  Instead, effective objectives are more like flight plans.  They set directions and guide the resources and energies. 
In The Essential Drucker: The Best of Sixty Years of Peter Drucker’s Essential Writings on Management, Peter F. Drucker writes about creating and setting effective objectives.
Key …

What is your business?  What will it be?  What should it be?   These are powerful questions to ask.
In The Essential Drucker: The Best of Sixty Years of Peter Drucker’s Essential Writings on Management, Peter F. Drucker writes about asking what your business is, will be, and should be to avoid spending your energy defending yesterday and instead, spend your energy exploiting today and the future.
Key Take Aways Here are my key take aways:

Ask what your business should be.
Systematically abandon what no longer adds value. …

“Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” — Steve Jobs
Innovation objectives are how you realize the potential for your business.  Innovation is how you can create game changers either in the marketplace, your product, or your processes.
From what I’ve seen, the people that do best with innovation are the ones that can effectively leverage their intuition.  I think the other real key is being able to turn innovation into results, both iteratively and incrementally.
In today’s world, I think another key that might not be as obvious is that …

“People who count their chickens before they are hatched, act very wisely, because chickens run about so absurdly that it is impossible to count them accurately” –  Oscar Wilde
How do you attract and retain good people?  People are your most important asset.  If your jobs aren’t attractive to qualified, ambitious people, you have an issue.  
In The Essential Drucker: The Best of Sixty Years of Peter Drucker’s Essential Writings on Management, Peter Drucker writes about setting effective resources objectives.
Key Take Aways Here are my …

“Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused effort.” — Paul J. Meyer
If your business doesn’t have productivity objectives, it doesn’t have direction.  If your business doesn’t have productivity measurements, it doesn’t have control. 
I think the meta-point is, assuming both businesses produce effective results, the more efficient one wins in the long run.  That’s consistent with my experience.  I think another important point here is that if you focus on your productivity, you can usually find a …

“There is nothing wrong with change, if it is in the right direction.” — Winston Churchill
The business development process is not something you do up front and then you’re done.  It’s a continuous process of innovation, quantification, and orchestration.  It’s a living system that you continue to evolve. 
In The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It, Michael E. Gerber writes about how the business development process is dynamic.
Key Take Aways Here are my key take aways:

Your …

"The measure of choosing well, is, whether a man likes and finds good in what he has chosen." — Charles Lamb
How do you know whether your innovations are working? You need to quantify your results. This is how take a business from good to great. You experiment, you innovate, and you measure your results. You carry forward what works and you throw out what doesn’t. If you don’t have the numbers, you’re flying blind.
In The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It, …

“Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship. The act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth.” — Peter F. Drucker
Which innovations can amplify your impact or save you time or create more value? Innovations in your approach. It’s one thing to try to innovate in your products. It’s another to innovate your process. Innovating in your process can unleash your capability, create more value, reduce costs, … etc. To get in the right mindset, you have to think of your business as a product. It doesn’t matter …

"A man with money is no match against a man on a mission." — Doyle Brunson
In A Simple Statement: A Guide to Nonprofit Arts Management and Leadership, Jamie Grady writes what he’s learned about mission statements over the years.
Key Take Aways Here are my key take aways:

Use your mission statement to gauge your success.  The biggest thing for me here is that the mission statement acts as a gauge for success.
Keep mission statements simple.  I’m a fan of simple, repeatable mission statements over elaborate …

“A culture is made — or destroyed — by its articulate voices.” — Ayn Rand
Corporate culture is the values.  It’s not what you say you value, it’s the actual actions.  It’s what people really get rewarded or punished for.
In A Simple Statement: A Guide to Nonprofit Arts Management and Leadership, Jamie Grady writes about corporate culture and the role that values play in shaping the success.
Key Take Aways Here are my key take aways:

Culture is made up of both tangible and intangible factors.  I …