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Making A Difference – Thoughts, Observations and Opinions
This is Dave Brock’s Blog.
It offers my views on a variety of business, sales, marketing, and leadership topic. My goal is to make a difference for you, the reader, in both your professional and personal lives.
Latest Posts
On Culture, Values, Beliefs
There’s always a lot of talk about corporate culture, values, and beliefs. Too often, these are treated as “PR.” Annual reports, analyst reports, communications to customers and communications within industry, espouse the culture of the company—and every once in a while, the companies actually demonstrate these in the way they work. Every company has a culture, values, beliefs—though those may not be what they claim them to be. We can understand the “real culture, values, and beliefs,” by the behaviors and actions we see demonstrated every day, at all levels. For example a company may declare itself to be customer […]
The “New” Onboarding
I was speaking with a niece who’s a school teacher. She is entering the school year with a challenge she hasn’t faced. Her school district will, through at least several months, be teaching virtually. We talked about her biggest concerns: “Last year, when we shut down classrooms in March, I had been working with my students for the entire school year. I knew each of them, I knew how to reach out and engage them, so the challenge of remote teaching wasn’t that bad. This year, I have 120 new kids. I don’t know them, I don’t know their strengths […]
Coaching The Uncoachable
Today, I had the honor of participating in a webcast on coaching, with Lori Richardson, Jason Jordan, and Mike Kunkle. A question that rarely comes up was, “What do you do if a person is uncoachable?” This is one area of coaching where I tend to be pretty hard-nosed, but I believe the following: If a person is uncoachable, it is not a question of IF that individual is terminated, only When! Let me explain myself. The uncoachable person has made the decision to stop learning and growing. We’ve all encountered people like this. They refuse to take feedback (or […]
“Do As I Say, Not As I Do!”
My parents were core in establishing my values and helping me grow as an individual (my Mom still teaches me lessons every day). They were phenomenal role models for my sisters and me. But I was a bit of a “challenge” to them, particularly to my father. I was very precocious–actually I was an ass. My father would talk to me about some critical behaviors and what I should do. Every once in a while, I’d catch him, I’d say, “But Dad, you aren’t doing the things you are telling me to do……” Finally, after whining about a bunch of […]
Experience Does(nt) Matter
Experience is an interesting thing. It is, sometimes, very helpful. But, too often it limits us. Experience can be helpful. As we do our work, our past experience in similar situations shapes how we address current situations. We know how to respond to customers that ask certain questions, or when certain things happen, we know certain responses/actions enable us to successfully deal with them. Experience enables us to make sense of the things we encounter and to be able to respond in a way that produces the results and outcomes we want. Without learning from our experiences, it would be […]
Good Revenue And Bad Revenue
It might seem odd, particularly in these difficult economic times, to talk about the concept of “good and bad revenue.” Some of you may be thinking “revenue is revenue, all revenue is good!” What’s the difference between good and bad revenue? Good revenue has the following characteristics: It generates strong profitability because it is from deals that we know how to support well. It is from deals where we know we can delight the customer, helping them achieve their goals, enabling us both to grow future business and creating accounts that are proud to share their delight in working with […]