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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
What About The Forecast?
Forecasting is important to our business, we spend a lot of time (often too much) on forecasts. But too often, we get forecasting wrong. Some observations: We strive for forecast accuracy, but we will never be perfectly accurate. Even the dictionary calls it a prediction or an estimate. Yet we waste a lot of time trying to achieve levels of accuracy that are unreasonable. The forecast is a prediction of revenue/orders we expect to get in a period of time. Managers and others in the business are anxious to know where we will be in terms of expected revenue or […]
Bit And Pieces, September 29, 2019
Just a quick book recommendation, On Tyranny, Twenty Lessons From The Twentieth Century, by Timothy Snyder. It’s a fascinating read, not just because of his take on current politics. He looks at how the roots of what we see happening in the US (and the world) can be analyzed against similar things that have happened in global politics throughout the past century. But, looking beyond that, I was fascinated about the applicability of his lessons outside of politics–to business, and to our social interactions. For me, applying those lessons to how businesses grow and thrive, what drives them to succeed […]
I’m Authentic Because I’m Telling You I’m Authentic
Warning To Readers: You may want to be careful in reading this. Apparently, I’m inauthentic. I have been identified as inauthentic for the sole reason that I have written a book. It’s somewhat a surprise to me, I didn’t think writing a book caused me to become inauthentic. I worry about the thousands of authors, probably the majority of which believed in their own authenticity. While many books I read, I disagree with, somehow, I seldom doubt the authenticity of the authors. If you are choosing to continue to read, knowing that I am inauthentic, I’ll wonder out loud about […]
Leadership, Patiently Impatient
I got a call from one of the most inspiring leaders I know: “Dave, I’m so frustrated, I have a vision for what we could be doing to grow the business, I think we can achieve so much more than we are–we are making our numbers. But we can do so much more, I can’t get people to move forward!” What this leader faced is, probably, the root challenge of all leaders. Leaders tend to have a great vision, sometimes an inspiring vision, and the challenge is, “How do we get everyone in the organization share that vision with the […]
FUD Meets FOMO
We and our customers live in worlds of paradox, uncertainty, confusion, complexity, overwhelm, overload, and constant change. Organizationally and individually, we are afraid of missing something—FOMO. We constantly move from one thing to another and then to the next. We see the latest technique, strategy du jour, technology, competitor and want to do the same thing. We watch competitors and others, worried they may be onto something, and that we might miss an opportunity. And they are doing the same with us. At the same time, we are plagued by Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt – FUD. We worry about making mistakes, […]
On Innovation
Innovation is important. We all know there is a limit to doing the same old things, over and over. Even though we may do them in greater volume or greater velocity, over time they become…….well old…..and not very effective. So we struggle to innovate. We think of the great new revolutionary or disruptive idea. We reflect on people like Thomas Edison and his inventions (like the light bulb), or the invention of the internal combustion engine, or Al Gore inventing the internet (sorry, I couldn’t resist). We tend to think of “innovation” as radically new and disruptive. These type of […]