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Themes to Live By in 2012 and Beyond

By Jeri T Denniston, Chief Marketing Officer, Denner Group International  12-12-2011 I was re-reading the book You Can Create an Exceptional Life, by Louise Hay and Cheryl Richardson, and came to a list of themes to live by that Louise Hay has used to guide her life’s decisions. They seem like the perfect way to…

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Evaluating Your Strategy Implementation Success

By Eric Denniston, Managing Director, Denner Group International If evaluating the success of your organization’s strategic initiatives seems to be an elusive endeavor, you should find the framework offered by the Strategy Implementation Model and the Strategy Implementation Maturity Survey (SIMS) very helpful. Much has been written about strategy development, strategic planning, strategic thinking and…

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Family Businesses Have Unique Challenges

Family businesses are unique entities that are frequently overlooked in terms of ownership. They also form the backbone of many US and foreign economies; what today are household names, started as family-owned businesses – SamSung, Wal-Mart, and BMW to name a few. According to a January 2010 McKinsey Quarterly article by Christian Caspar, Ana Karina…

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Parallel Involvement in Our Tablet Initiative

By Eric A Denniston, Managing Director, Denner Group International  4-8-2012 Part C – PLAN Now, as we begin to plan what we’re going to do about deploying our tablet initiative in our warehouse, let’s keep our parallel involvement process going to mitigate any other potential unintended consequences. This is a key Systems Thinking tool.  A…

Systems Thinking Best Practices in Tablet Initiative

By Eric A Denniston, Managing Director, Denner Group International  4-8-2012 Part B – THINK As we move into the THINKING stage of this exercise, let’s consider what the thought styles should be. How you think is really important in achieving results. We are engaged in a project that is intended to have a lasting effect…

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Using Systems Thinking to Shift Culture

By Eric A Denniston, Managing Director, Denner Group International    11-18-2011 Takeaways: Systems Thinking is an excellent tool to stay ahead of changes in the world around us. Understanding and applying it in organizations improves communication, reduces unintended consequences, and changes the internal culture. What is Systems Thinking and why should it be important to ALL…

Applying Strategic Thinking at Work

By Jeri Denniston, Chief Marketing Strategist, Denner Group International  6-8-2011 Takeaways: Answering five simple questions is the key to applying strategic thinking at work or in life. Focus on outcomes rather than tactical actions to change conversations with others and find common ground. Applying Strategic Thinking in everything you do is easy –  whether it’s…

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Insights to Embracing Change – Using Systems Thinking

By Eric A Denniston, Managing Director, Denner Group International  6-8-2011 You see things and you say, Why? But I dream things that never were; and I say, Why Not? – George Bernard Shaw Are you a mid-level manager, a supervisor, the CEO of a young, growing organization, an owner of a small business or a…

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7 Steps to Make Planning Easier

By Eric Denniston, Managing Director, Denner Group International Takeaways: Planning can become an integral part of work. Prioritize, follow the Rule of Three, identify resources for each project, and set long term schedules are some of the steps to follow. It is apparent that planning seems to be a business task that people now often…

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Building a World Class Organization

By Jeri Denniston, Chief Marketing Strategist, Denner Group International 4-12-2011 Takeaways: Both passion and purpose are needed for building a world class organization. It’s important to know the difference between passion and purpose. I’ve been reading Michael Gerber’s E-Myth Mastery to see how his recommendations dovetail with systems thinking. He is, after all, a systems…