Genius by Osmosis
Steve Schultz
Project Managers: Do your freaking homework!
There are so many people that are either officially designated as “project managers” or at least act in a similar function in business improvement that do NOTHING but manage projects. While you are thinking in your head, “DUH!” let me explain. PMs get bogged down by the daily routine of managing timelines, budgets, people and [...]
News for Obama: High Prices Don’t Equal Record Profits
While this blog is not intended to be political, I cannot sit back and continue watching this stupid attack ad launched by the Obama campaign against oil companies and Mitt Romney. Here’s the commercial that plays on the ignorant with stupid lies: There is not necessarily a cause and effect relationship between price and profit. [...]
Analysis Paralysis
Many of you have suffered through this and hopefully many of you can avoid this. I was working on a project optimizing cost and service level of this product (a transactional process). While I was digging into the model and analysing the data there was something I couldn’t reconcile. As I looked at the data [...]
The Problem is Not Always the Problem
Sometime ago I was working with an “on-again off-again” client looking at an inventory management system (which I’ll call IMS from here on). A friend of mine who works in their industry has been working with them for some time as they were fairly new business owners in a volatile service industry where inventory probably [...]
Decision Science is Decision Difference
Do you ever get sick of that data guy? I hope not. Data is the lifeblood of any successful business. Anytime an organization deviates from what the data said, they often find poor results. In those instances where the results are good…they just weren’t looking at the right data. Data does and will tell ALL. [...]
Top-down Empowerment Does Not Equal Bottom-up Innovation
Surely you’ve gone through some “employee empowerment” program at your workplace. Companies are spending tons of money trying to compel employees to “own” their jobs, question authority (to a degree) and be empowered. The organizations I’ve spent time with are heavy in culture and employee empowerment. Many have seen great success in this area while [...]
Long-term Strategic Framework
If you were to ask the average person (or at least the average person that I know) working in corporate America about how they leverage strategic methodologies in their day-to-day work they probably will say never. In fact, best case scenario, when asked about strategy they may just give you some explanation of how their [...]
The Misnomer “Vulture” Capitalism
Politics aside, the attacks leveled against Mitt Romney, Bain Capital & venture capitalism in general have been unfair, dishonest and frankly, against the very foundation of capitalism itself. So let’s take these junior high school level attacks one at a time. While these attackers play on the ignorance of the masses when it comes to private equity, [...]
Martial Arts for Marketing
At what point does social media marketing, or Internet marketing in general, transform from a pull strategy to a push strategy. Sure, we all see the spammers on Twitter and those annoying Facebook pages you “liked” because you are related to the owner. All they try to do is sell, sell, sell. On the flip [...]
The Author:
I'm a Six Sigma Black Belt & project manager trained by a Fortune 100 company with a degree in, what I like to call, Growth Strategy (Entrepreneurial Management), from Drake University and a hobby called Internet marketing. I've worked in numerous industries consulting and providing innovative ways to solve business problems from large enterprises to small shops. I hope you'll enjoy my rants and venting about business, marketing and strategy. If there is one thing you can count on, I always follow the data, preferably, miles outside of the box.