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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
No "A’s For Effort"
Kids are headed back to school—-it’s caused me to reflect on comments we hear from teachers, parents, and friend—“A for Effort.” That term has slipped into our vocabularies and we apply it to all sorts of business and personal situations. I suppose it’s an attempt to justify failure to achieve results. It seems much of what is done, even rewarded today focuses on effort, not results or accountability. People are very busy, work incredibly long hours, load their agendas up with meetings, lots of activity, and overlay that with constant interruptions of Blackberry’s, mobile phones and emails. Somehow “busyness” has […]
Social Networking, Form Triumphs Over Substance
I’ve been curious about the phenomenon of adding friends, passing on introductions, etc. The two networks I actively participate in are LinkedIn and Facebook. Recently, though LinkedIn, I have received invitations from several old, long lost colleagues. I have anxiously responded, accepting their invitations. With every response, I send an email, expressing my delight at re-connecting and suggesting a personal dialog–email, voice to voice or otherwise. In most cases, I am disappointed. These contacts don’t respond, I’m added to their list, but never hear from them. What’s the purpose? I guess they are shooting for quantity over quality. My physical […]
Multi-tasking Is Dead
Just a quick post, I was reading Michael Hyatt’s Blog: From Where I Sit, and saw this great quote from Tmothy Ferriss. It expresses what I have been clumsy at expressing in past blogs. It does it in one sentence. “Multi-tasking is dead. It never worked and it never will. Intelligent people love to sing its praises because it gives them permission to avoid the much more challenging alternative: focusing on one thing.” I’m reading his Tim’s book right now, The 4 Hour Work Week. I’ve just started it, appears to be well written, but I am a little skeptical. […]
When I Want Your Opinion, I’ll Tell You What Your Opinion Is, And You Will Like It!!!
I usually try not to rant against specific companies in this blog, but I just bought a new car–a Lexus. I had used Lexus in the past as the benchmark for outstanding sales experiences, but it’s changed. It now is aligned with every other car shopping experience I have had. It is among the worst and most distasteful buying experiences I have seen. (When will the auto manufacturers get it?!). My rant is not about this terrible experience, but about the end. I was given a survey by the sales person. It was already completed, indicating that I was completely […]
Real Business People Multitask
Ever wonder why we don’t get things accomplished in meetings these days? There are lots of reasons, but my pet topic right now is multitasking. The scenario is always the same…..A critical meeting is finally scheduled, it took weeks to do, but everyone is scheduled to attend The Meeting……. …….people drift into the conference room……12 minutes late…..Everyone spends the first 5 minutes jockeying for power outlets, network connections, etc.You finally start, it’s now 17 minutes into the hour….Fortunately, you’re organized, you have an agenda, you’re focused, you persevere. Things get going, in the background you hear the sound of fingers […]
Passion, Hard Work, and Building Businesses
I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently. There have been many discussions in various media about passion, work, money and building businesses. What’s your view about what it takes to start, build, and grow a business?Some things I am reacting to: At the recent Dow Jones D conference, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were asked if making money was what drove them in building their businesses (In both cases, a LOT of Money!). Steve had a very interesting response. He stated that starting a business required a certain amount of insanity. He suggested that sane people would be driven […]