Doug's Blog Archives – Page 27 of 58

6 Jan 2011

CES Keynote by Microsoft

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:48:43-06:00January 6th, 2011|Categories: Doug's Blog, Software Development, Technology|

I took some time today to watch Steve Balmer and his team from Microsoft present at CES in Las Vegas. I was following some people talking about it on Twitter during and after.

What really amazes me is how much we now take amazing advances for granted these days; we expect it instead of being surprised.

Companies used to release everything at one of the big shows. It was the best way to guarantee a large uptake if the reviews went well. Today though, companies spread their announcements out over time to better take advantage of speed to market and critical purchasing […]

5 Jan 2011

Shaping the Path – Building a Business That Reinforces Success (Part 2)

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-04T14:30:48-06:00January 5th, 2011|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog|

Continued from Part 1…

People and Process

I think the real trick to leadership and correspondingly actual fulfillment doing the work (team member) is to have the right balance of scripting and freedom to choose how you accomplish the work.

Script the things that don’t require creativity, are repetitive, or are really important to follow exactly the same process. Surgeons scrubbing for surgery have a predefined process. They don’t reinvent it each time. This saves having to think about it or the risk of making mistakes.

The same holds true during change. Because you are changing behavior it is sometimes necessary to script the […]

4 Jan 2011

Shaping the Path – Building a Business That Reinforces Success (Part 1)

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-04T14:32:48-06:00January 4th, 2011|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog|

In a recent post I talked about Driving Corporate Change – Made Easier and how we can take the lessons from a book and apply them to what we are doing in the real world. I did the same for Business Retrospective – Finding The Bright Spots, digging deeper into one chapter and integrating it into my thoughts on reflection. This was fitting as we were also wrapping up 2010.

Today I want to talk about creating an environment for success.

Whether we call it working on the business, building a business architecture, franchising a business, or shaping the path […]

27 Dec 2010

Business Retrospective – Finding The Bright Spots

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-04T14:38:19-06:00December 27th, 2010|Categories: Doug's Blog, Leadership|

As humans we tend to focus on negative things more than positive. After projects that don’t go well we have post-mortems to discover all the things that went poorly and try to fix them for next time. After submitting a sales proposal and not winning the business, we have a review to look at why we didn’t win.

As business owners we need to step beyond this tendency and look more at what is working.

This mean looking at projects that went well and looking at the things that you did right; so you can do more of it and have more successful […]

15 Dec 2010

Driving Corporate Change – Made Easier

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-04T14:40:43-06:00December 15th, 2010|Categories: Books and Courses, Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Mindset and Motivation|

If you’ve been reading my blog posts over the last few years, it should come as no surprise that I have been putting a lot of focus into what makes companies and people succeed. I’ve been reading books, attending seminars, reading blogs, etc.

Our mission is

“Help people achieve their full potential; including living a fulfilling life.”

We are building a software product to do just that for entrepreneurs and business coaches.

We are at an amazing point in history; so much of the knowledge that people have amassed is readily available and openly shared for our taking. This blog is […]

10 Dec 2010

Measuring Awesome

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:49:13-06:00December 10th, 2010|Categories: Doug's Blog, Leadership|

If you want to deliver awesome (services and products) to your clients, how do you measure awesome?

Ask your clients.

(They are the ones who need to feel you deliver awesome.)

9 Dec 2010

Our Mission – Defining Our Purpose and Direction

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-04T14:42:52-06:00December 9th, 2010|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Mindset and Motivation|

After reading, researching, thinking, brainstorming, agonizing and writing numerous blog posts on the subject… I am finally ready to share our very own mission. Theory is great but time to show a real example, one that is close to home.

Our (Sunwapta Solution’s) Mission

“Help people achieve their full potential; including living a fulfilling life.”

Breaking It Down

The first part is somewhat straight-forward.

Help people achieve their full potential. Maximizing the potential of people.

Without the second part we felt that there was a danger that we could help people achieve their full potential but that their lives might not be in […]

2 Dec 2010

Why? Why? Why?

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-04T14:44:42-06:00December 2nd, 2010|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Mindset and Motivation|

“Why? Why? Why?” said with your best Jack Nicholson impersonation (think the Witches of Eastwich movie where Jack plays “gasp” the devil).

Why should you have a mission? Why should you have a vision? Why should your goals and business strategy be tied to these things?

Many (most?) people strive to find a higher purpose or meaning in life; especially once they become aware of their mortality.

Some people, including many business owners strive to create a legacy… to live beyond the grave through their business or some other mechanism.

As someone recently said in a seminar […]

1 Dec 2010

Living Your Mission

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-04T14:46:44-06:00December 1st, 2010|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Marketing, Mindset and Motivation, Sales|

In a prior post I defined the mission as being the Tweet sized statement of your service to humanity without reference to your current products or services. The mission is long-term and should be able to survive changes in your business offerings. In fact this is essential, as what exactly your business does, must change over time to address the changing world in which we live.

But your mission is not just for your customers.

You must live it internally in your company. Your shareholders, partners, vendors, and employees must see the consistency.

Before the Internet and social media you could […]

24 Nov 2010

Aligning People and Strategy

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:49:37-06:00November 24th, 2010|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Mindset and Motivation|

Some people or companies think you can buy loyalty and productivity. As Daniel Pink says in "Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us" this is motivation 2.0 at work. The carrot and stick approach to management that derives from the factory mentally of the previous century. It works, to a degree, for repetitive work where the problem to be solved is linear and repeatable.

But much of today's work is knowledge and creative work. The outcome is not a linear, repeating process but rather requires a unique solution each time. Software development is generally like this. Sure each […]

Doug’s Blog

People and Process

Our (Sunwapta Solution’s) Mission

Breaking It Down