By Michael Kanazawa

Suggestions boxes are a joke to most people in organizations. If they are successful, they get overloaded to the point that no staff person can even read through all of the suggestions much less make recommended business changes. But more often, they are a cold, demeaning reminder that low level people have no access to the leaders to provide input or feedback upwards.

In fairness to executives, many of the ideas are so far off the mark in terms of strategic direction or practicality that they are not even worth reading. Bottom line, they don’t create the right kind of dialogue they are intended to produce. There is a method that has been used successfully to generate breakthrough ideas from front-line teams to generate huge savings, jumps in sales, and stand-out customer service. Learn how to adopt this approach for your organization. (more…)

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By Michael Kanazawa

Believe it or not, Fall is almost upon us. And, once again, the USC Trojan football team is being ranked #1 in their conference and nationally in many polls. They have created a dynasty of championship teams and there is something for business leaders to learn from how they are run as a team. Similar to stock analysts having to divulge their holdings, I am a big USC football fan and therefore biased. However, whether you love, hate, or don’t know the USC Trojans, there is a great lesson to be learned from them about how to lead your team to greatness. For you, maybe Fall is the time to refocus on a push for the year-end results and maybe a good time to try out a new facet of leadership to get you there.

Too often in business, people fall into the trap of trying to drive results in ways that cause individuals on the team to play with fear. People end up working to avoid getting in trouble, to just keep their job, or to meet their minimal performance standards. Stories of bosses intimidating, dominating, and humiliating employees are unfortunately pretty common. For short spikes, you can yell and scream your way into getting more from people. But in the end that wears out and never gets the best out of each person. There is a better way to build a high performance team. (more…)

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By Michael Kanazawa

Mobilizing teams of people to act with speed and efficiency is a critical component of successful companies. Getting a fast start is especially important when launching a full corporate transformation. Often, taking too much time to debate, over-analyze and over-engineer an approach undermines an entire effort.

Recently, a main artery in the San Francisco Bay Area was shut down due to a tanker fire that actually melted the roadway. Newscasters warned that traffic would be snarled for months, which would have been a major disruption to the regional economy. The contractor selected to fix the problem, C.C. Meyers, stepped up to the task and delivered a solution far faster than anyone expected. Twenty seven days after the accident, people were commuting on that same freeway again. How was the team able to achieve such great speed? (more…)

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