Ever wish for a way to call attention to the GOOD behavior of a business you serve or that serves you? Today you have that chance! The Minnesota Business Ethics Award® (MBEA) invites all Minnesotans to recognize and celebrate businesses that get it right! Good performance plus good ethics. For the 2014 Awards, your nominee [...]

1. A Message from the President: Check That: A Simple Way to Ensure Accurate Results  I got a call recently from our next door neighbor – a call probably similar to calls that you all get during the holidays: they were going out of town for a four-day weekend, and they asked if we could watch the mail, [...]

I got a call recently from our next door neighbor – a call probably similar to calls that you all get during the holidays: they were going out of town for a four-day weekend, and they asked if we could watch the mail, get the paper, water the plants, and make sure the house doesn’t [...]

1. A Message from the President The Butterfly Effect: Managing Your Organization as a System  Because most things in life are part of larger systems, some seemingly trivial events can have significant impact.  For example, in 1961, mathematician and meteorologist Edward Lorenz took a shortcut in entering data in a weather prediction model.  He innocently entered .506 instead [...]

Because most things in life are part of larger systems, some seemingly trivial events can have significant impact. […]

1. A Message from the President: If All You Have is a Hammer…The Importance of Having a Full Improvement Toolkit 2. Network Events Nov. 5 Knowledge Forum: Everything I Always Wanted to Know About Customer Make-or-Break Moments (SE MN) Rochester Community and Technical College (RCTC), Rochester MN Nov. 7 Knowledge Forum: Minneapolis Minneapolis Community and Technical College, [...]

“If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail,” so the saying goes.  In other words, each tool – be it for carpentry, cooking, or process improvement – has a distinct purpose, and tools are sub-optimized if they are used for anything other than that distinct purpose.  […]

A Message from the President: Chillax: 13 Ways to Reduce Workplace Stress Network News and Events Learn What Drives Organizational Excellence: 2013 MN Performance Excellence Award Evaluator Application Deadline 10/1  Strategic Planning: the Glue that Holds it All Together (Rochester) 10/1 Creating a Great Customer-Inspired Experience (St. Paul) 10/2 Managing Relationships in K-12 Schools (& [...]

Perfect Vision: The Power of Leading Indicators to Predict Future Outcomes Although our beloved Minnesota Twins are suffering a third straight year without playoff baseball, many pennant races are in the final stretch.  In channel surfing a couple of nights ago, I caught some of the Texas/Kansas City ball game, in which the Rangers pitcher, [...]

A Message from the President: Chillax: 13 Ways to Reduce Workplace Stress Network News and Events Creating a Great Customer-Inspired Experience (Minneapolis) 09/10 Continuous Improvement at Dunwoody (Minneapolis) 09/05 Listening to the Voice of the Customer (Rochester) 09/10 Leveraging Peer Insights Inside Your Organization (St. Paul) 09/11 Personality Assessment & Applications — MNODN (Minneapolis) 09/12 [...]