tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-214265882011-12-13T19:55:37.255-08:00ideas. insights. intuitions. to provide inspiration & instigation. to create a culture of innovation. for technology. leadership. business. relationsihps. life.Rich Phanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09120548512763980051noreply@blogger.comBlogger141100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21426588.post-1142704638937319352006-03-18T09:54:00.000-08:002006-03-18T13:39:31.000-08:00

Success means a lot of different things to different people. Even the same person may see success as the achievement of different goals in different areas of life. To a large degree, our notion of "success" is shaped by the values of our society or community.When we say of someone that he or she is a successful person, normally we attach to that ascription the accumulation of a certain amount of

Rich Phanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09120548512763980051noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21426588.post-1140564425733505172006-02-21T15:02:00.000-08:002006-02-21T20:51:16.106-08:00

F-E-A-R!This unassuming little emotion can come up from nowhere and grip you so tightly to paralyze you before you know what has happened. It can happen just before an important meeting. Or before you are going to make that momentous presentation. Or when you need to be picking up that telephone to make those calls. Or before you pop the question.It often rears its ugly head at the most

Rich Phanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09120548512763980051noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21426588.post-1139588214180904832006-02-10T08:07:00.000-08:002006-02-10T08:16:54.193-08:00

Several years ago, someone robbed our house while we slept! I will always remember that night. It was a warm, muggy evening in Perth, Western Australia. The temperatures were in the high 30's on the Celsius gauge (that's nearly 100 degrees Fahrenheit). I had been working in a room with a window facing the front yard. I had opened the window to let the air in as it was getting unbearably stuffy

Rich Phanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09120548512763980051noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21426588.post-1139469491754522652006-02-08T23:04:00.000-08:002006-02-08T23:18:11.766-08:00

Quoted in this post at Fast Company Blog is this thought provoker from Microsoft's Bill Gates: "The most meaningful way to differentiate your company from your competition, the best way to put distance between yourself and the crowd, is to do an outstanding job with information. How you gather, manage, and use information will determine whether you win or lose."Suppose Gates is right in his

Rich Phanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09120548512763980051noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21426588.post-1139466016063118872006-02-08T21:50:00.000-08:002006-04-21T07:29:55.783-07:00

Several years ago, someone robbed our house while we slept! I will always remember that night. It was a warm, muggy evening in Perth, Western Australia. The temperatures were in the high 30's on the Celsius gauge (that's nearly 100 degrees Fahrenheit). I had been working in a room with a window facing the front yard. I had opened the window to let the air in as it was getting unbearably stuffy

Rich Phanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09120548512763980051noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21426588.post-1138896034218640142006-02-02T07:41:00.000-08:002006-02-02T08:25:32.230-08:00

Sometimes we have a setback in life. It might be during a sports match, or a slump in business, a career stagnation or even a lay-off. Sometimes it might even be a dry patch in a relationship, or worse. It is during such times that we need to take a step back and focus on how to rebound so that we are not drawn into a downward spiral of despair and despondency.Here are some ideas to help you

Rich Phanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09120548512763980051noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21426588.post-1138725692230358742006-01-31T08:22:00.000-08:002006-01-31T09:00:20.013-08:00

Whether you are a business person attempting to communicate with a potential client, or a parent interacting with a child, or someone in a relationship, one of the biggest investment of your time, energy and focus is to listen intently to the other party. I learned this simple lesson just the other night, when I attempted to interrupt a heated interchange between two of my teenaged children.I had

Rich Phanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09120548512763980051noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21426588.post-1138299874791337862006-01-26T10:13:00.000-08:002006-01-26T17:56:02.100-08:00

I read this book several years ago, and it fired me up!It is a story about the author, Frank Pacetta, who was assigned to one of the worst performing sales territory of his multi-national firm as sales manager. He took the time to look at the territory and the team, and then set about with a plan and strategy that transformed the team from the bottom of the heap to the top within a couple of

Rich Phanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09120548512763980051noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21426588.post-1138283307617963052006-01-26T05:42:00.000-08:002006-01-26T05:48:27.626-08:00

Keith Ferrazzi of Never Eat Alone Blog has a great story about awesome customer service over at his blog:...I was in the Orlando airport with Peter Winick,who leads FG Professional Development, waiting for our flight to Columbus on our way to Real Living – after a fun evening with the salesforce down at Fidelity corporate. We were in Outback Steakhouse, and I had beendying for soup. So I ask the

Rich Phanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09120548512763980051noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21426588.post-1138236869922720822006-01-25T16:52:00.000-08:002006-01-25T18:45:01.343-08:00

Many astute marketers have carefully planned campaigns to promote customer loyalty and create systems to track and measure customers who keep returning to buy more products or services. In this way, companies are able to distinguish those customers who are leaving and those customers who continue to do business with the company. There is the old adage that the longer a customer stays with a

Rich Phanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09120548512763980051noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21426588.post-1138159598122753462006-01-24T19:10:00.000-08:002006-01-24T23:26:19.676-08:00

In Boston Legal, James Spader plays attorney Allan Shore, the iconoclast devil-may-care legal eagle who doesn't give a hoot about conventions, and goes about his legal wrangling in his own unassuming, eccentric manner. (Actually every main character of the Boston Legal show is eccentric. It probably should be called, Boston Wierdos or something similar, but let's just leave it at that).In

Rich Phanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09120548512763980051noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21426588.post-1138121995013268782006-01-24T08:59:00.000-08:002006-01-24T08:59:55.016-08:00

Sun Zi (or Sun Tzu) says:Know your enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles, you will never be defeated. When you are ignorant of the enemy but know yourself, your chances of winning or losing are equal. If ignorant both of your enemy and of yourself, you are sure to be defeated in every battle.Although I do not usually like to characterize business as warfare, the ideas

Rich Phanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09120548512763980051noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21426588.post-1138090009088680252006-01-23T23:56:00.000-08:002006-01-24T00:06:49.096-08:00

Ricardo Semler (of Maverick fame) once said, "Business Plans are extrapolations of wishful thinking." So, what do business plans mean to you and your organizations? Do you have a business plan? If you do, how much do you let your plan guide your activities?

Rich Phanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09120548512763980051noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21426588.post-1138083634499715632006-01-23T22:18:00.000-08:002006-01-23T22:24:20.780-08:00

At a meeting today, someone quoted from a book that he is currently reading: "In order to be disillusioned, one must first have an illusion."If you find yourself disillusioned about an organization, a person, a campaign or an event, you need to stop yourself and ask: what was my illusion about that which I am now disillusioned about?We all look at life through a pair of glasses. Whatever the tint

Rich Phanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09120548512763980051noreply@blogger.com0