There’s still over a month before Labor Day, which usually marks the end of summer. By now, you might have noticed employees seem a little less enthusiastic about deadlines and meetings. It’s called the mid-summer slump, and it’s not uncommon. In fact, research from the digital media company…

One of the greatest challenges any business faces is staying relevant in a competitive environment. In the past, business leaders were forced to feel out their environments and read the tea leaves of industry and market forces to stay in the game. Today, a new augur for performance and planning…

The first time you try to put together IKEA furniture, it seems simple enough. You have all the parts; the instructions appear well documented and sequential. But more often than not, 20 minutes in you realize you’ve got trouble: boards are upside down, the unfinished edge is showing on one side,…

In my last blog post, Recruiting Won’t Solve Your Talent Shortage, I wrote that training and development is often overlooked as a talent shortage solution. APQC’s Open Standards Benchmarking in training and development provides a clue as to why. It shows that most organizations today…

Earlier this week, I received a question through APQC’s Ask Us service from a member who wanted to read more about organizations that have achieved level 4 or 5 on APQC’s Levels of Knowledge Management Maturity scale. I get asked this question at least a few times every month, so I thought it would…

The ongoing Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) corruption investigation took a comical turn on July 20, 2015 when a British comedian began throwing fake money at long time FIFA President Sepp Blatter, requesting a World Cup be held in North Korea. While many observers have…

Earlier this year, APQC fielded a survey focused on current supply chain management priorities and trends. Our results highlighted the continuation of some trends from previous years and revealed some emerging practices.  I recently recorded a podcast with APQC Program Manager Andrea…

Senior business executives need to identify unique opportunities for growth, organize resources for their pursuit, and extract a sound return on investment. Those who succeed are good at understanding that performance can be proactively influenced. They create an effective and cost-efficient…

I was recently able to speak with Dipanjan Das, Vice President of  Order to Cash Practice and Rana Saha, Transformation Leader at Genpact  about how organizations can use predictive analytics to re-design their order management process to match customer needs; resulting in increased…

When your organization faces a skill shortage is recruiting the primary solution? If you answered yes, your organization may be approaching talent scarcity with one hand tied behind its back.  As a worker, you’ve likely experienced the consequences of persistent skills shortages. When jobs…