Home: Authors: Kevin Burns

If your people are good but not great, if your management is good but not great, if your sales numbers are good but not great, if your attrition numbers are good but not great, if your safety numbers are good but not great, if your innovations are good but not great, if your service is good but not great, if your results are good but not great then you have a corporate culture of "good enough." Don't deny it. It's right there for everyone else to see. Your results prove it.

There is an unsettling attitude running rampant in Corporate America today: the attitude of good enough. That's what happened with GM - they went to the market with an attitude of "good enough." But when times got tough and people pulled in their spending, "good enough" wasn't good enough. It's a lesson every single consumer, employee, business owner, CEO and entrepreneur should take heed of.

What about real estate signs that read, "Number 1 Realtor?" I've seen signs for three separate Realtors these past few weeks marketing themselves all as #1 Realtors - and they all work for the same company in the same city. Huh? What is the criteria for being a #1 Realtor? How can every seventh Realtor claim to be #1?

Before you think teamwork is the answer and spend large sums of money on “team-building” exercises, maybe you should consider whether your place of business needs teams at all. Perhaps more would get done by leaving your people alone to do what they already excel at. Forcing people to join teams simply for the sake of “inclusion” is a bad idea.

There are 350,000 opinions (books) on "leadership" on Amazon. Corporate America can't seem to draw a consensus on what leadership is so it's really no big surprise that Corporate America can't figure out what soft-skills are and why they are important either. Here's the best way to put it. If it's a skill you need to perform your job, it's a technical or a performance skill. If it's something that makes you a better person, it's a soft-skill.

People have checked out of communicating face-to-face. And while this may have occurred, it has left a small void for people with decent social skills to climb the corporate ladders quickly. The successful CEO's of tomorrow are going to be the one's who know how to look people in the eye, shake a person’s hand, wear a real genuine smile, make some small talk and refuse to be cut off from the rest of the world.