One Millimeter Mindset

JANUARY 18, 2023

How many of you have encountered individuals, strategies, projects, goals, and KPIs which give you Professional Pause? These ideas and values, when read in a meeting agenda or spoken during the course of a live or digital meeting, make you suck in your breath. You immediately close your eyes. More importantly, your brain stops working. As a result, you do not read or hear any further than the words triggering your Professional Pause.

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Consulting Innovation Customer Experience Meeting 93

One Millimeter Mindset

JANUARY 11, 2023

How would others describe your professional intensity during your interactions with them? On one hand, the strength, energy, or feelings which you create can inspire, catalyze, and drive people to move forward. Alternatively, the strength, energy, or feelings you create can make people want to mentally run for the exit door – even though they diplomatically keep smiling and nodding their heads.

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Consulting Interaction Innovation Engagement 73

One Millimeter Mindset

DECEMBER 28, 2022

What is our next one millimeter forward together as we traverse towards 2023? How have your focus and perspective evolved? Heading towards a new year together, I remain grateful for your readership, inspiration and support. I commenced blogging in 2009. Yet, during the last two years, my personal and professional perspective was profoundly impacted.

Travel 87

Travel Customer Experience Consulting Innovation 87

One Millimeter Mindset

OCTOBER 26, 2022

Do you know a rare colleague who influences your life so much that they become Legendary? These are the individuals whom we trust implicitly due to their ethics, values, professionalism, and overall humanity. The Legend is more than the sum of their expertise and proficiency. Your day is always better because you know they are there, in the background, regardless of whether or not you need their help.

Consulting 85

Consulting Loyalty Innovation Customer Experience 85

One Millimeter Mindset

OCTOBER 19, 2022

You are pushing client boundaries when you present and spearhead updated or new ideas, concepts, tools, and technologies. Often, your efforts do not result in accolades from that client. Far too frequently, clients view your efforts as contrarian. Why is that? First, your innovations move them one millimeter beyond what is known and comfortable. Next, adapting and adopting your offerings challenges them.

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Consulting Innovation Customer Experience Culture 93

One Millimeter Mindset

OCTOBER 12, 2022

Your actions, assumptions, and perspective impact making ideas actionable and understandable. Are you one of “those” team members who is always throwing new ideas out on the table, like a jump ball? And are team members “jumping” at the chance to play around with your ideas? Or do your ideas fall with a loud “thud” on the table, without being bounced around at all?

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Consulting Innovation Customer Experience Leadership 102

One Millimeter Mindset

SEPTEMBER 14, 2022

When you upgrade professionally, what are your continued expectations about the impact of your achievements? During the past few years, many of you upgraded professionally. The convenience of earning online certifications, without all the hassle and expense of travel and living costs to attend in person, was appealing. Many of you took the plunge. In fact, some of you became professional certification over-achievers, taking great pride in announcing your accomplishments nearly daily on LinkedIn.

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Consulting Innovation Customer Experience Social Media 84

One Millimeter Mindset

SEPTEMBER 7, 2022

Do you describe yourself as intellectually curious? Those small actions you choose to do as part of your daily personal and professional life become habits influencing your values, mindset, and performance. Perhaps it is time to do a bit of self-observation. For example, will you take the time to look up the crossword puzzle words which stymie you? Then what happens?

Innovation 85

Innovation Leadership Social Media Consulting 85

One Millimeter Mindset

AUGUST 24, 2022

Initially, there’s a high probability you will lose your balance when learning to ride a 2-wheel bicycle. Also, there’s a high probability that you will fall off the bike and land on the pavement. Ouch. So, what will you do next? Right now, many of you parent, teach, or coach young people doing life events for the first time: learning to ride bicycles, play sports, attend kindergarten.

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Sports Leadership Training Innovation 101

One Millimeter Mindset

JULY 27, 2022

Do you consistently build or derail client trust in you? What you say to clients, from meeting to meeting, spoken, and written, matters. Because what you communicate, and how you communicate, either constructs or erodes why customers do business with you. One of my mentoring clients regarded each appointment as something to cross off her To-Do list.

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Meeting Leadership Innovation Consulting 84

One Millimeter Mindset

JUNE 15, 2022

You control how you are investing emotional energy on clients (and colleagues). Some clients always seem to demand more time and attention than others. Yet, these clients are not necessarily the ones who bring out your professional best, are they? Eventually, you decide that the emotional hassle factor may not be worth excess time and attention, moving forward.

Customer Experience 86

Customer Experience Consulting Leadership Innovation 86

One Millimeter Mindset

JUNE 8, 2022

When clients are prioritizing absolutely everything, no crystal clear and actionable target emerges. It’s like the clients go to an all-you-can-eat, no limits buffet. They keep piling stuff onto their plates. Yet they are neither interested in the food nor hungry enough to eat what they choose. When you allow clients the freedom of prioritizing absolutely everything, you do yourself a great disservice.

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Innovation Consulting Leadership Strategy 80

One Millimeter Mindset

JUNE 1, 2022

Are you the default team problem-solver for your teams? Did you earn that default role by chance or design? Are you enjoying the role? If you collaborate on teams, you know that problem-solving together is complex and sometimes frustrating. During some meetings, everyone is on fire and of one mind! Then, during other meetings, perspectives and energy are all over the place.

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Innovation Meeting Customers Customer Experience 102

One Millimeter Mindset

MAY 11, 2022

You all serve clients regardless of your respective professional disciplines. So it follows that when you serve those clients, your focus primarily is helping clients prioritize their own needs. That focus is truly noble. However, as you work with those clients, at what point do you shift your focus towards meeting your own needs first? Crossing that barrier, or interface, is where theory meets practical reality.

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Customer Retention Loyalty Sales Innovation 88

One Millimeter Mindset

MAY 4, 2022

Are you serving yourself first or last? Or do you dismiss the importance of serving yourself first as being selfish? On the other hand, do you ever focus on putting other people’s needs ahead of your own? Take a breath, step back, and ask yourself the three questions encompassed in the title of today’s blog post. Instead of being pulled in all sorts of directions, create the balance you seek.

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Consulting Innovation Leadership Customer Focused 90

One Millimeter Mindset

APRIL 20, 2022

Does your idea velocity move faster than clients are able to process what you have to say? Clients need mental breathing room, especially when dealing with complex problems. Consider that moving forward, there really are no simple issues. Everything and everyone is interconnected to everything and everyone else. As a result, clients wrestle with the single idea that yesterday’s linear thinking will not catalyze today’s and tomorrow’s successes.

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Innovation Consulting Leadership Customers 107

One Millimeter Mindset

APRIL 6, 2022

Are you leveraging business stories that make people think twice? Business stories provide rich, illustrative palettes upon which to engage people to move forward together. Are you intentionally – or unintentionally – causing people to think twice about their direction, speed, objectives, goals, and purpose? When business stories catalyze people to think and rethink about the status quo, you focus them on what is new, next, and changing.

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Innovation Customer Experience Consulting Leadership 94

One Millimeter Mindset

JANUARY 26, 2022

How will you provide value to clients throughout 2022? Will your strategy yield occasional rather than continuous value? Some of you are always-on, hard-charging professionals. Others of you are more laid-back. However you are just as diligent and proficient about best serving client needs. Either way, value creation and delivery leverage whether you truly understand the value your clients need from you.

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Exercises Meeting Innovation Customers 94

One Millimeter Mindset

JANUARY 19, 2022

Surprised to enter 2022 digging yourself out of a huge 2021 customer defection hole? It just could be you left your entire client retention strategy up to the virtual customer retention dog. What excuses do you make to your managers about your less-than-stellar rate of customer retention? Consider that customers who defect have an entirely different story to share.

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Customer Retention Customers Touchpoint Strategy 99

One Millimeter Mindset

JANUARY 5, 2022

Each New Year brings with it a plethora of blog posts and articles. These pieces encourage you to set bold goals, crush quotas, and move forward with resilience and vigor!! Realistically, you just may not have the mental (and physical) energy to fulfill everything you are told to do in those articles. Equally realistically, consider how your professional priorities changed over the past 12 months due to pandemic experiences.

Innovation 85

Innovation Leadership Consulting Consumers 85

One Millimeter Mindset

DECEMBER 22, 2021

As you and I enjoy the remaining days of 2021, I offer you these three tips to reflect on as we move one millimeter forward together into the new year. Cut yourself some slack. Do you realize your inner critic holds you back instead of allowing you to move one millimeter forward towards where you really need to go? Is that critic (still) telling you that you are not perfect?

Tips 89

Tips Innovation Leadership Consulting 89

One Millimeter Mindset

DECEMBER 15, 2021

Creating your 2022 playbook of what it takes to design, align, and implement solutions clients really want? First, consider that these solutions and outcomes may not be aligned with what your organization’s culture (and strategy) currently support. Then, consider that what clients really want may reside beyond your organization’s core competencies. However, aligning solutions with the reality of what clients really want is an opportunity.

B2C 90

B2C Innovation Consumers B2B 90

One Millimeter Mindset

DECEMBER 8, 2021

Today is the day!! You are thinking about becoming a PMI-certified Complex / Wicked Problem Solver. Now you can! I am offering you an exclusive 21% course discount. As a PMI Affiliate, I am thrilled to offer this gift, and these savings, to you. What’s involved? 3 easy-peasy steps. Today, give yourself the gift that impacts how you serve and lead tomorrow and future-forward.

Innovation 90

Innovation Course Resources Consulting 90

One Millimeter Mindset

NOVEMBER 24, 2021

This month, review these three chewable one millimeter mindset blogs: posts freshly created throughout November 2021. As you digest your Thanksgiving meal (and leftovers!), chew on my perspectives a bit more. Then, let me know what you think. First Post – Chewable One Millimeter Mindset Blogs. Will Your Clients Elect (And Re-Elect) You As Their Go-To Professional Resource?

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Loyalty Customer Experience Leadership Innovation 18

One Millimeter Mindset

OCTOBER 20, 2021

Your workplaces are more hybridized. And your hybridized workplaces call for a more hybridized team mindset to create tomorrow’s successful business outcomes. Things in the workplace feel out of synch, don’t they? Some professionals to continue working virtually. Others prefer working solely in physical environments. And yet other colleagues rotate in and out of workplace scenarios based on set, but flexible, schedules.

Innovation 94

Innovation Resources Leadership Meeting 94

One Millimeter Mindset

OCTOBER 13, 2021

Consistently choosing the right solution to better serve colleagues and clients is no easy task. First, the right solution is not necessarily the easiest or most popular. Next, you or your team can become comfortable choosing professionally comfortable solutions. Over time, your arsenal of comfortable solutions makes you myopic to selecting the best solutions for solving current problems.

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Innovation Leadership Meeting Consulting 86

One Millimeter Mindset

OCTOBER 6, 2021

Have you ever been involved in a project where everything looked great on paper? Until, that is, the project is implemented within a real-time setting? At that point, what you expect to happen takes off in all sorts of unanticipated directions. I can see some of you nodding your heads in agreement. And I have a great program designed to address this specific question: “3 Questions, 4 Agreements, and 5 Whys Catalyze Professional Innovation.” .

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Innovation Leadership Meeting Consulting 86

One Millimeter Mindset

SEPTEMBER 29, 2021

First, how will you get from where you were yesterday to where you really need to go, today? Then, how do you plan to navigate from a professional place of irresolution today to one of resolution tomorrow? Throughout September, the pace of how we work accelerated. Are you experiencing that sudden surge in the velocity of our workplaces, as everyone plugs in simultaneously?

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Innovation Leadership Travel Meeting 88

One Millimeter Mindset

SEPTEMBER 22, 2021

Do you perceive yourself as a problem solver, manager, or a spectator? Think about it. First, a colleague identifies a current or potential problem. Next, are you their top-of-mind, go-to resource to find a solution? Or are you the last person clients and colleagues consider for complex problem solving? Alternatively, are you a sought-after, stellar manager of complex problems?

Management 77

Management Innovation Resources Leadership 77

One Millimeter Mindset

SEPTEMBER 15, 2021

Are you comfortably connecting strategic value dots across your organization? If you are really, really comfortable connecting those dots, you may not be providing the robust yet nimble business outcomes you target. Here’s why. There are three reasons why being too comfortable in your professional role is not the feeling you should seek. However, confidence in your professional role fuels professional growth and innovation.

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Connections Innovation Leadership Meeting 95

One Millimeter Mindset

SEPTEMBER 8, 2021

Do you have the same post pandemic professional target you aimed at about 18 months ago? Our professional environments have shifted. Many professionals I speak to feel somewhat out of sync professionally: trying to fit back into environments that just do not fit them anymore. Are you an out of sync professional? Is what you are feeling necessarily a bad thing?

Meeting 87

Meeting Innovation Leadership Consulting 87

One Millimeter Mindset

AUGUST 11, 2021

Organizational value silos are found in all sizes and shapes of companies. Initially, silos are created and nurtured by business and hiring models which categorize people into functional roles based on how they solve problems. Then, these silos are perpetuated by problem-solving tools, mindset, and terminology “owned” by the professional disciplines inhabiting these silos.

Culture 116

Culture Innovation Leadership Meeting 116

One Millimeter Mindset

JUNE 23, 2021

Do you describe yourself as professionally accessible? Particularly when collaborating with cross functional colleagues from professional disciplines other than your own. The keys to your professional success incorporate your awareness of where, when, how and why scenarios are created/permitted which contribute to communication and collaboration disconnects.

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Meeting Leadership Innovation Interaction 65

One Millimeter Mindset

JUNE 9, 2021

Being professionally valuable to colleagues and clients is an ethical, strategic, and purpose-driven choice. You put the work in to attain those 10,000 hours of mastery. Your value is how you deliver on your professional promise. So why do you feel as though you are constantly justifying your value to others? And why do you feel as though you are (still) perceived as a commodity?

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Innovation Leadership Brands Customers 66

One Millimeter Mindset

MAY 27, 2021

Revenue generation is everyone’s collaborative responsibility, regardless of whether it is stated or not in your job description. Are you engaged in revenue generation or cost containment in your current professional role? Instead of either-or, let’s transform your role into yes-and. Are you going back into traditional professional roles which separate people by how they solve problems?

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Leadership Innovation Conference Meeting 99

One Millimeter Mindset

MAY 25, 2021

Do you ignore or dismiss signals that you are going to professionally blue screen? Consider these signals are opportunities for you to move one millimeter beyond where you are today. Get to where you really need to go, tomorrow. Now, a computer blue screen is nothing to look forward to. I dealt with this issue, on and off, ever since I got a new computer in 2018.

Customer Experience 66

Customer Experience Innovation System Leadership 66

One Millimeter Mindset

MAY 13, 2021

Brain cross training is a potent strategy for becoming more professionally visible, cross-functionally relevant, and strategically valuable. And this hybrid skill set is tailor-made for what is new and next in our workplaces. Sound daunting? It’s easier than you think. Just give yourself permission to move one millimeter beyond what is currently professionally comfortable.

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Training Meeting Leadership Innovation 84