As a college student, I was a volunteer on Joe Biden’s initial race for U.S. Senate. I recalled him saying something like, “If I’m elected, come see me in Washington.” Twenty or so years later I did just that. I put Biden to the test. It was after a speaking engagement in Washington, D.C. I was about to head to…
During the depths of the Global Pandemic, I began to notice a disturbing comment in the interviews I conduct regularly with organizational leaders. It went something like this: “We can’t even think about next week, much less next quarter. Strategic planning and forward thinking are out the window.” It was an understandable sentiment. We were reeling, and there was no…
The sun is coming out on the conference industry, just in time. Even worse than the cruise industry, the meetings industry has been hammered by Covid-19. Hundreds of mostly small businesses have simply disappeared. Many others are on life support. Those of us who’ve been in the industry awhile know that when the economy catches a cold, the meetings industry…
Each year I interview dozens of organizational leaders on their most pressing business challenges. In my conversations during the past year, operational and crisis-driven issues — keeping employees safe and supply chains functioning — have predominated. And even as readers in some countries (Brazil and India) are experiencing infection surges and rising deaths due to the ongoing Global Pandemic, the…
When Covid shut down life as we know it a year ago, many a company went into “batten down the hatches” mode. They followed their recession playbooks. When demand took off instead, in such industries as exercise equipment, pet products, and virtual meeting software, many were caught flat-footed. Some are still struggling to catch up. Wisconsin-based Trek Bicycles is out front right now based…
“How can you be upbeat about a ‘post-pandemic future’ when there’s so much pain and uncertainty right now,” a colleague asked me the other day, as we were preparing for a webinar. Valid question, I had to admit. Here it is December and things seem on the brink of chaos. A surge in coronavirus cases on top of a surge…
