Recommended Reading: 15 Books Recommended by Top Leaders

Recommended Reading: 15 Books Recommended by Top Leaders

by Tim Empringham, MBANo Comments
I'm always looking for great books to add to my reading list and I often get requests recommendations from friends and colleagues. I figured it was high time I put together a list of recommended reading from some of the top business leaders and CEOs of our time. Most CEOs and business leaders will tell you that a constant commitment to learning is one of the key drivers for their success. Reading is one of the easiest and most accessible ways to expand your knowledge or learn about new topics. Feel free to add your own thoughts and recommendations in the comments. For now, off to the list! (more…)...
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Busy or Productive – Increase Your Productivity with These 8 Tips

Busy or Productive – Increase Your Productivity with These 8 Tips

by Tim Empringham, MBANo Comments
Time is the one true constraint for all of us in our lives. We all have 24 hours in a day. We all have 60 minutes in an hour. You can't change the pace of time. But what we can change is how we use that time. Most people I know are busy within their constrained time. A few people I know are productive in that time. Are you busy or productive? Here are 15 tips that can help you highlight where you fall, and how you can improve your productivity, be more successful and reduce your stress. Not every tip will work for everyone. Individual work styles differ, and some people can optimize more or less in each of these areas. The most important factor to success in productivity improvement is to be conscious in your efforts. Take time to understand how you work today and how that could be improved. Then execute against that plan. (more…)...
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Connecting the Value Chain

Connecting the Value Chain

by Tim Empringham, MBANo Comments
Many of the recent Innovation success stories have been about the creation of new ecosystems which have created new customer value in a way that wasn't imagined previously.  The iPod and iTunes created an ecosystem of music which included the simple purchase, organization, and portable playback that previously took several steps and suppliers to achieve.  Square is doing a similar thing by connecting the wallet and payment process with the retail point-of-sale system to build an ecosystem and environment that allows both sides of the payment equation to do things more easily than they have in the past. Much has been made of the "ecosystem" as the business model of the future and a key to Innovation success, but in most of the reading I've done the piece that doesn't get connected is how exactly one should think about innovating a new ecosystem.  Certainly if several people and companies have been successful in building new ecosystems in the past we should...
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Is Your Culture Conscious?

Is Your Culture Conscious?

by Tim Empringham, MBANo Comments
During this cold and flu season (and having already been stricken with the seasonal bug), something about the concept of a virus struck me as a great lesson for leadership.  (OK, maybe it's the cold medication talking, but stick with me for a minute and we might get somewhere). In the wild viruses strike fear in the heart of the public every winter as the seasonal cold and flu season picks up. Reports of viruses sourced from animals like the bird flu and swine flu increase our fear of infection.  But viral behaviour can be managed through science and every year the new flu shot concoction is made available to the public to help fend off the effects of what we think will be the seasonal strain of flu.  To develop these flu vaccinations, scientists use a biological culture called Agar to grow the virus that threatens all of humanity in a controlled environment in order to develop and test methods...
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