Outside-Force Business Development Firm

How to Win the Battle Within Recently, while reading a piece by Marshall Goldsmith, I was reminded of a very insightful principle one of my early coach/mentors taught me. During one of our sessions in the “Rare Book Room” at Eastern University, Dr. Harold Howard described to me the inner battle we all have. The battle goes like this… in the morning I plan to do a bunch of things that are important to me… finish my A tasks (back then we planned our days with paper and pen using an organizational system much larger than my current laptop), start three new B tasks, write 5 thank you notes, spend 30 minutes doing my MBWA (management by walking around) activities, etc. Then my day happens… and of course, I only accomplish, if I am having an awesome day, half of my plan. What happened? What happens most days? Well, Harold described what Marshall calls the planner and the doer in all of us. The planner is wide-eyed and believes you can do so much and starts the day with vigor. The doer… ...

Supercharge your leadership by fostering gratefulness             If you did a fully anonymous 360 review and all those who report to you, and your peers, completed the survey, would they all say “wow, she is the most exciting and engaged leader I have ever worked for or known”? OK, so very few leaders would achieve this level and yet, those of us who take up the mantle of leadership want our team to passionately follow our lead and bring energy to our mission.             The mountain of material on leadership is impressive. There certainly is no shortage of research, scholarly writing, and opinion writing on the topic. I applaud those of you who are willing to be in the arena of leadership and who regularly read and apply the latest thinking to your craft. Leadership is personal! Leadership can be bloody. Oh, you know what I mean, people judge your every move, they...

Purposeful Hiring   Andrea Vaughan | Outside-Force BDF As an HR professional, I have to admit hiring is not my favorite sport. Yet, I believe it is the single most important decision a company makes when building a team, or at least ranks right up there. If you’re going to go through the process of hiring, ROI should be a key factor. A great hire adds to the company and team; conversely, a poor hire yields a poor ROI as I wind up going through the hiring process all over again. So, over my decades in HR, I’ve become quite good at screening and reading people before they become employees. Because, once they’re on board….it’s a different ball game if the wrong person was hired. Recruiting and hiring is one of the numerous responsibilities I have, so obviously the more time I spend here the less time I have to focus elsewhere. Hiring well means the company gains a valuable employee and I can check it off my list. No need to revisit; however, if I hire poorly I can promise t...

Fostering a Lean Culture Through Your Employees Andrea Vaughan | Outside-Force BDF   While working for a traditional batch manufacturer in the early 2000’s we faced many of the typical challenges - bloated inventory, many interruptions in flow, frustrated team members, missed shipments, cash flow challenges, and so much more. Then we saw lean in action and it changed our paradigm. Be careful not to encourage quality over quantity; and, competitiveness over teamwork. Challenges are inevitable when you begin such a significant transformational journey. The first major impact was to the employees, and it was a doozy; how we paid our team had by using a piece rate system. When we implemented one of the first major changes, it was eliminating piece rate and moving to hourly rates. The team loved piece rate and was not happy to see it go, yet we realized as we learned Lean, that such a structure was adverse to Lean. Piece Rate encouraged quantity over quality and...