Author name: Doug Knuth

… without committing to accomplishing extraordinary things. Real and lasting operational excellence requires a catalyst. A spark of inspiration that enables your leadership team to see things from multiple perspectives and in fresh ways. Achieving the extraordinary requires “wholistic”thinking—beginning with understanding the mind of your client and/or customer and how it aligns with your products

—Innovation, technology, and clever marketing are useless without focus— Without a coherent strategy, business initiatives — no matter how clever or precisely executed — are an endless uphill battle. And though your ultimate objective is always  within sight — you never reach it. Harvard Business Review reports a mere 11% of executives believe that all of

One of the greatest challenges that comes with success in business is managing profits. On more than one occasion business owners have asked for guidance on what they should do with “all this money we’re making.” It is a nice problem to have but the ramifications are profound. Naturally, the answer is dependent upon how

“The route to transformation is profound knowledge.” — W. Edwards Deming Transformation is a hot topic these days. Mainly because technology brings change much faster and at a much greater scale than ever before. Which means business leaders must keep a sharp eye on dynamic customer demands and requirements as well as seen and unseen competitive

“The unused, neglected, and really costly information you store in a data warehouse, master customer information file, data lake, or any other place isn’t lost forever — it just seems that way.” In discussing The Theory of Everything and the Information Paradox, Stephen Hawking said, “I propose that the information is stored not in the

In the 1980s the writings of mid-seventeenth-century Samurai warrior Miyamoto Musashi took America by storm. In those days, Japanese businesses were surgically dissecting western competitors wielding a sword called Total Quality Management (TQM). To keep pace American business leaders swarmed bookstores in search of Musashi’s Go Rin No Sho, A Book of Five Rings, a

Conscious Consumerism: The thinking behind movements like “know your farmer,” “slow money,” and “made in the USA” will gain greater traction in the B2B sector. Fact-based buying and sustainable procurement practices are attracting top talent to an area of the business once viewed as milquetoast. Links in the supply chain are tightly integrated as firms