2024

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Two Proven Investments to Improve Sales of Your Consulting Services

David A Fields

If you want your consulting firm to attract and close more engagements than you’re currently winning, you’ll need to make a change – to invest in growth. But where? The answer will probably surprise you. Below is a broad (and admittedly incomplete) range of people and services you could invest in to accelerate your consulting … Continued The post Two Proven Investments to Improve Sales of Your Consulting Services appeared first on David A.

Sales 396
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5 Ways AI is Revolutionizing Instructional Design

Clarity Consultants

Artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing how many companies operate and handle various tasks. In the world of instructional design, AI is proving a valuable asset by accelerating development timelines, creating more opportunities for personalization, and more. That’s why leading instructional design consultants leverage the technology, as it allows them to offer the best possible results to client organizations.

Tools 115
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Owning Our Future: A Solution to the Property Ownership Gap

UPD Consulting

I’m a Black millennial property owner, of course we have the largest ownership gap of any generation. For decades, a massive property ownership divide has persisted between white and Black/Latine Americans. It’s getting worse. Data shows Black Americans make up only 8.6 percent of the U.S. landlord population, while Latine Americans make up only 16.6 percent (compared to 64.5 percent white Americans).

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Explore the Top 5 Advantages of Incorporating OKRs into Strategy Planning

Strategic Planning and Management Insights

Incorporating OKRs in strategy planning provides an effective framework that drives growth, aligns your goals, and tracks your progress.

Strategy 111
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PowerPoint Best Practices for Creating Stellar Presentations

Mastering data visualization in PowerPoint will help accelerate your career because it positions you as someone who can present data that drives business decisions forward. think-cell's PowerPoint Best Practices eBook was created specifically for professionals aiming to master the art and science of data-driven storytelling. What’s inside: Practical Insights: Uncover valuable tips for crafting engaging and persuasive presentations.

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6 Common Leadership Styles — and How to Decide Which to Use When

Harvard Business

Research suggests that the most effective leaders adapt their style to different circumstances — be it a change in setting, a shift in organizational dynamics, or a turn in the business cycle. But what if you feel like you’re not equipped to take on a new and different leadership style — let alone more than one? In this article, the author outlines the six leadership styles Daniel Goleman first introduced in his 2000 HBR article, “Leadership That Gets Results,” and explains when to use each one.

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4 Reasons Why Managers Fail

Harvard Business

Gartner research has found that managers today are accountable for 51% more responsibilities than they can effectively manage — and they’re starting to buckle under the pressure: 54% are suffering from work-induced stress and fatigue, and 44% are struggling to provide personalized support to their direct reports. Ultimately, one in five managers said they would prefer not being people managers given a choice.

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6 Strategic Concepts That Set High-Performing Companies Apart

Harvard Business

Strategic concepts come in and out of fashion as the needs and dynamics of the marketplace change. Research and analysis of today’s landscape identifies six key strategic concepts that set outperforming companies apart: Borrow someone’s road, partner with a third party, reveal your strategy, be good, let the competition go, and adopt small scale attacks.

Company 100
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Leading a Company That Can Thrive in a Chaotic World

Harvard Business

Worldwide, the past few years have been marked by multiple, intersecting crises — and things aren’t likely to get less complicated anytime soon. The authors met with a group of CEOs to discuss how they lead amid this ongoing chaos. To thrive in this chaotic new world, organizations need leaders with inner strength, character, and a moral compass. By continually adapting and learning, they’ll enable their organizations to navigate these ever-turbulent waters.

Company 100
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A Growth Strategy that Creates and Protects Value

Harvard Business

For organizations to truly innovate and grow, leaders in every role and at every organizational level must be attuned to how they are creating new value while simultaneously protecting existing value. Just as a soccer coach must simultaneously pursue both scoring and defending, leaders must constantly focus their attention on opportunities to create value — through innovation, risk-taking, and experimentation — and to protect value — by preserving and defending key aspects of their responsibilit

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How to Stay Competitive in the Evolving State of Martech

Marketing technology is essential for B2B marketers to stay competitive in a rapidly changing digital landscape — and with 53% of marketers experiencing legacy technology issues and limitations, they’re researching innovations to expand and refine their technology stacks. To help practitioners keep up with the rapidly evolving martech landscape, this special report will discuss: How practitioners are integrating technologies and systems to encourage information-sharing between departments and pr

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5 Well-Intentioned Behaviors That Can Hurt Your Team

Harvard Business

Most people can spot a toxic leader and connect the dots on why and how they are causing damage. But it’s much harder to recognize when well-intentioned leaders are actually hurting their teams because they aren’t aware of their negative impact, and team members aren’t always comfortable pushing back. If you’re a manager with a strong desire to be helpful to your team, be aware of these five common ways you may inadvertently hurt them despite your best intentions.

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3 Career-Building Strategies for an Increasingly Complex World of Work

Harvard Business

Most workers used to have fixed roles within a hierarchical organization, but today the nature of work today is becoming fluid and dynamic. Project-based work and freelancing are increasingly common, and many roles are now defined by outcomes rather than hours spent at a desk. Success in this new work environment requires not only recognizing that this shift has taken place but also actively strategizing to leverage it to your advantage.

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How to Address a Resume Gap When Switching Careers

Harvard Business

The prospect of a new career can hold a sense of excitement. But what should you do if your job search has become a disheartening slog and the gap on your resume just seems to be growing wider by the day? What can you do to protect your mental health and rekindle your optimism for the future? In this article, the author offers practical advice to help you navigate your career switch when you’re worried about a widening gap on your resume.

Resumes 97
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When You Have to Make a Strategic Decision Without Much Data

Harvard Business

One big challenge that leaders have when figuring out how or where their companies can grow is that a dearth of data about future problems and opportunities. In these situations, there are three techniques that leaders can employ to develop insights: look at customers and startups for signs of change, experience new technologies rather than just read about them, and practice “associative thinking,” which means connect two seemingly disparate concepts to develop a novel idea.

Data 100
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Savings Consultants Are Needed in Today's Market More Than Ever

Savings Consultants are needed in today’s market more than ever. With an increase in expenses, businesses are looking for opportunities to save. Often unknown to businesses are savings in expense reduction, specialized tax savings, specialized savings including medical underpayments, health benefits cost reduction, zero cost processing, and more. Blue Coast Savings, with over 20 years in business, assists Savings Consultants in helping these companies move toward more profitable businesses.

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Put Marketing at the Core of Your Growth Strategy

Harvard Business

Companies that make the decision to put marketing at the core of their growth strategy outperform the competition, according to McKinsey research. Specifically, both B2C and B2B companies who view branding and advertising as a top two growth strategy are twice as likely to see revenue growth of 5% or more than those that don’t (67% to 33%). Yet their research also showed that few CEOs recognize the potential for marketing as a growth accelerator.

Marketing 100
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How to Discuss the Undiscussables on Your Team

Harvard Business

Surfacing the undiscussables on your team may be uncomfortable, but it must be an ongoing campaign, or they will sneakily build up in the background and impact your employees’ morale. In this article, the author explains how to spot the classic signs of undiscussables — meetings marked by quick consensus, a lack of productive debate, or uneven participation — and offers strategies on how to uncover those unexpressed thoughts and feelings to help your team work more productively.

How To 96
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How to Actually Execute Change at a Company

Harvard Business

The author analyze project teams across 257 firms to identify why only 60% of planned value is typically realized in change initiatives, focusing on four key factors: effective initial communication (“ACE the Memo”), ensuring resource accessibility and autonomy (“Master the Means”), employing mechanisms to align actions with goals (“Amplify with Mechanisms”), and strategic measurement to influence future outcomes (“Measure to Account”).

Company 99
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How to Make Small Talk with Anyone from Anywhere

Harvard Business

Meet-and-greet conversations can be uncomfortable. And they can feel especially daunting when you’re paired with strangers from different cultures, like when networking in a global business context. In this setting, light and introductory-style conversations (what some of us know as “small talk”) can be very helpful, and even necessary. Small talk is a quasi-universal tool for initiating conversations with strangers from different cultures, for building a quick rapport, and for planting the seed

How To 99
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TOOLS and METHODOLOGIES for developing DECISION SUPPORT PACKAGES

This White Paper targets opportunities for Management to develop proficiency in the Decision Framing and Analyses element of input to Decision, & Risk Analyses for Major Project Funding Decisions.

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What to Do When Your Team Blames You

Harvard Business

When you’re a manager, at some point, regardless of how the circumstances arise, your team will blame you for something that’s making them unhappy, whether you have control over it or not. Being accused by your team of failing them in some way induces a threat state in your brain, impairing your ability to think clearly and triggering a variety of cognitive distortions and defensive behaviors.

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How to Succeed When You’re Not the Boss’s Favorite

Harvard Business

Staying positive and motivated is tough when your boss has a clear favorite. When you feel like you’re not favored, you may hesitate to proactively communicate with your boss, worrying that you might be a bother and worsen your relationship or that your attempts will be futile. However, a passive approach will result in missed opportunities for growth, clarification, and relationship-building.

How To 98
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How to Make Peace with a Company Decision You Don’t Like

Harvard Business

In our work, there are times when we lead but there are also times when we must follow — and we may not always agree with the path we’re told to follow. We may feel “stuck” in anger, anxiety, and confusion. But, we want to demonstrate resilience to our team and we want to maintain a good relationship with management. So, how do we forge ahead and follow with grace?

How To 99
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5 Networking Tips for Introverts (and Anyone Else)

Harvard Business

Even if you’re an introvert who dreads the notion of networking, you can develop your skills to get out there and do it. Research by the Lehigh@NasdaqCenter, a partnership between Lehigh University and the Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center, identified make-or-break factors for developing networking skills. They include: the ability to adapt your thinking swiftly in response to changing situations; combating a tendency to focus more on avoiding errors and negative results and instead striving for pos

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Why You Need to Use Case Studies in Sales and Marketing (and How to Start Now)

Case studies are proof of successful client relations and a verifiable product or service. They persuade buyers by highlighting your customers' experiences with your company and its solution. In sales, case studies are crucial pieces of content that can be tailored to prospects' pain points and used throughout the buyer's journey. In marketing, case studies are versatile assets for generating business, providing reusable elements for ad and social media content, website material, and marketing c

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When New Hires Get Paid More, Top Performers Resign First

Harvard Business

To attract new talent, employers often offer new hires higher wages than existing employees. But today, a combination of regulatory changes and technological advances have dramatically increased pay transparency in many sectors, making employees increasingly aware of these pay disparities. How do existing employees (and especially top performers) react to these higher-paid new hires?

Agile 98
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Lessons from Beyoncé on Navigating Exclusion

Harvard Business

In 2016, Beyoncé’s performance at the CMA Awards sparked backlash from fans complaining about everything from her attire to her lack of connection to the genre. This year, she released her first country album, which debuted at number one on the Billboard 200. Her actions over the past eight years have been a case study in how to navigate workplace exclusion.

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CEOs, Is Your Business Strategy Bold Enough?

Harvard Business

There has never been a more difficult time to be a CEO — the urgency for bold and transformative leadership echoes louder than ever. In an environment where the stakes are high and the competitive landscape is rapidly evolving, complacency is a risk few can afford. In PwC’s 27th Annual Global CEO Survey, 45% of CEOs said they do not believe their companies would survive more than a decade if they remain on their current path.

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To Succeed with AI, Adopt a Beginner’s Mindset

Harvard Business

Times of substantial tech progress and change, like the current AI revolution, create fear and anxiety. This often causes leaders to fall back on their ego and emphasize their expertise, closing their minds and negatively impacting their people and organizations. Instead, leaders need to take on a beginner’s mindset of openness and curiosity. This is not easy.

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The Art of Remote Collaboration: How to Successfully Whiteboard with Remote Teams

Just because we're working with a distributed team doesn't mean we have to abandon time-tested tools and methods like whiteboarding. Digital look-alikes often cramp creativity and all but eliminate the humanity of shared interactions. Hardware solutions are also limiting and, of course, expensive and immobile. In an increasingly digital and remote-first world, it’s important for us to select tools and processes that allow us to mitigate if not eliminate the above problems.