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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
Keeping Priorities Straight
Reading the New York Times article: Keeping Priorities Straight, Even At The End , I was reminded about the related story I read last Fall. I am inspired by the courage, perspecitve and humor of Randy Pausch, a professor at Carnegie Mellon. Dr. Pausch is dying of Pancreatic Cancer. Last September, he delivered is “final lecture” on Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams. I’ve watched the lecture and read the transcript. It is inspirational. It’s not a lecture about cancer or dying, it’s a lecture about living a full life. It’s a fun and genuinely interesting talk, certainly worthwhile reading/watching. The […]
Guilty As Charged
Email is both a wonderful tool and something that can get in the way of effective communications. Too often, we —- I plead guilty in this case —– use email when a direct conversation is more appropriate. Somehow email is so easy, in a few seconds, I can send a missile across the world. I can hit as many targets as choose, then I can run and hide. All of it is too easy, and is probably not great for effective communications. Yesterday, I noticed, I sent a colleague an email message, I got an immediate email response, to which […]
Challenging Idea
I liked this sentiment and thought it important to post: We can change the world by changing how we choose to look at the world. Enough said.
Auto Manufacturers and Dealers — Will They Ever Learn?
Every few years, I subject myself to one of the most frustrating experiences a consumer can ever go through, I buy a new car. I’ve been buying cars for too many years, and the experience is always terrible. After every dealer visit, I feel like I have to take a shower to clean the slime away. As a side note, before I get into my rant, a number of years ago, I wrote an article on the same topic. it was called “The Ultimate Buying Experience,” a tongue in cheek take off on the advertising theme of a large German […]
What You Stop Is Important
Everyone I encounter, professionally and personally, has more on their plates than they could possibly accomplish. In virtually every business, organizations are trying to do more, with fewer resources and people, in shorter periods of time. That seems to leak over into our personal lives, with each of us over committing to each other. At some point, you start seeing very dis functional behaviors: Stress levels high, tempers short, people unhappy, people frustrated, fingers pointing, blame being passed and so forth. I’m working with one large organization that has undergone a series of severe resource cutbacks over the past 2 […]
"Completed Staff Work"
I was having a conversation with a client, the CEO of a Fortune 100 organization, and he cited something I hear from many leaders and executives, “My people come to me with problems, they don’t come to me with solutions.” There was more to it, but the comment reminded my of something a manager/mentor in IBM gave me many years ago. It was a short document called, “The Doctrine Of Completed Staff Work.” I’ve traced it to two sources, Brigadier General G.E.R. Smith, of the Canadeian Army (08/09/1943) and Brigadier General George A. Rehm, US Army, 1942-1943. Some may be […]