Category: Uncategorized
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My Hunt for a New Car Part 2: The Purchase
On Friday, I bought a 2004 Nissan Maxima off a dealer lot. It’s a nice looking car that filled my requirements – price, space, perceived reliability and safety. While this is all fine and good, it doesn’t make for an interesting blog. How the deal was made makes for a much more interesting story. On…
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My Hunt For a New Car
Two weeks ago, my car was flooded in a flash rainstorm. It’s a 1998 Honda Accord with 280,000 km on it and I bought it new. That car is by far the best I ever owned and I was pretty sad to see it go. It was as inexpensive and reliable as it gets. Here’s…
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How to Win When the Game Isn’t Fair
Imagine yourself a major league general manager. Now consider this: your top three players from last year have left the team for free agency because you cannot afford to match competing offers. Your owner wants to run the team like a business and set the payroll at $40 million (the three free agents that left…
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Seth Godin's Linchpin: a review
Have you read Seth Godin’s Linchpin yet? If not, you owe it to yourself to pick up a copy. In fact, this is the best business book I have ever read. It gets to the core of why some are failing and some are thriving. It gets to deeper meaning, like how to get more…
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Outsourcing CT Imaging – Brilliant, Evil or Useless?
Yesterday, John Gormley Live featured a story about the Regina Qu’Appelle Health Region requesting proposals for a third-party CT scanning center. There are currently three units in operation and a fourth unit would reduce the waiting for this treatment. Health Minister Don McMorris said that this will reduce wait times for patients. Based on the…
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Career day advice.
Today I gave presentations to Grade 9 and 12 students at Carlton Comprehensive High School for career day. I told them about what I do and I gave them a couple of questions to try out being a business consultant. When I was asked to do this, I thought about myself in high school and…
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You can’t benchmark your way to prosperity.
CDHT3SDNHRBK Organizations use benchmarking to try to achieve a number of goals. Lots seem to make sense. It seems sensible to find out how you are performing against competitors. You will find out where you are outperforming your competitors and will find where they have the jump on you. A number of companies provide this…
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“Cost Accounting is Productivity’s Public Enemy Number One”
This quote comes from Thomas Corbett’s book “Throughput Accounting.” Corbett quoted this from the godfather of Theory of Constraints (TOC), Dr. Eliyahu M. Goldratt. This is a bold statement but is true. Cost accountants and business managers are not stupid, so how can this be? This blog explores these questions and proposes a solution. Why…
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Coffee’s for Closer’s Only – Some Insight Into Big Sales
We all know the archetype of the salesman. The alpha male, type 1 personality that who’s motto is “Always Be Closing.” Conventional sales training emphasizes five key skills: Opening the call. Find ways to connect with the buyer and make some initial benefit statements. Investigating needs. Use open questions to get the buyer to describe…
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You can’t trust conventional wisdom.
Like last week, this week’s blog comes from the world of sports. I grew up in Saskatchewan and got an engineering degree at the University of Saskatchewan. This means that in my spare time, I analyze data surrounding men’s curling results (yeah, yeah, I know). Why would I write about curling in a business blog?…