Twenty years ago at a great conference, I learned a wonderfully simple model summarizing the personal change process.

Story update 2/2/2012: We inadvertently used the wrong graphic for the Third Estimates. This has been fixed.

Last week, a drive by a 99¢ Store (see photo) reminded me of my first real job in an industrial marketing department.

BusinessAssurance.com, the world’s first online management systems community, which is sponsored by Lloyd’s Register Quality Assurance Inc., brings to you an interview with Mike Toffel, a leading management systems expert and an associat

The menu has folded out into four sections. Each page has a picture next to the delicious option; however, I know the server will be taking the menu away from me after I’ve placed my order. I’m pondering how I can confirm that my order is the same as the picture.

Novelist Rose Tremain is quoted as saying, “Life is not a dress rehearsal.” Accordingly, there are no second rounds. We get one chance—one moment—and there is no looking back at what could have been. Sounds pretty depressing, doesn’t it?

Lack of loyalty is a serious problem in organizations everywhere today. No longer do people join a company and devote the rest of their working lives to it.

I don’t know how much is spent on the benchmarking industry, but companies and governments seem to spend an awful lot on it.

The objective of all improvement projects should be to improve the effectiveness, or the efficiency, of the core processes. Everything else should be secondary to this objective.

If you combine tough economic times with a presidential election year, you get a heightened interest in how the economy is changing. Is it growing faster or slowing down?