Achieving Business Excellence

I have just returned from presenting a workshop at the Apple Specialist Marketing Conference (what a great group of people, and I got to meet Steve Wozniak while I was there – a really fun and interesting guy!). The session I delivered was on “Building  Increased Accountability” and was extremely well received, so I thought I’d share a couple of the key takeaways with you here on my blog. Continue reading “Creating MORE Accountability” »

I really liked this book – thought it was full of great information. Click on the cover to learn more about “From Bud To Boss.”

.I hope you found this podcast helpful, I look forward to your comments, feedback and suggestions for future podcast topics.  Thanks so much – take good care, John

John Spence is named one of Top 100 Thought Leaders

 Gainesville, Florida – January 19, 2011 – John Spence has been selected as one of Trust Across America’s “Top 100 Thought Leaders”. Trust Across America is dedicated to unravel the complexities of trustworthy business behavior, and selects the Top 100 Thought Leaders in Trustworthy Business Behavior. These people collectively represent a group that can genuinely transform and reverse the cycle of mistrust in business.

According to Barbara Kimmel, Executive Director, “This year’s recipients include leaders from the public and private sectors as well as authors, consultants, researchers and academics. Each recipient has made extensive, positive contributions to building trust in business.” Some distinguished individuals in the company of John Spence include Jim Collins, Warren Bennis, Bill George, Tony Hsiesh (CEO Zappos), and Rosabeth Moss Kanter.

 The Top 100 Thought Leaders represents the culmination of two years of research. Trust Across America sought the counsel of and requested nominations for this honor from over 150 professionals across the nation. The list was narrowed through an extensive vetting process.

According to Barbara Kimmel, “These individuals are inspiring organizations to look more closely at their higher purpose…to create greater value for, and trust from, all of their stakeholders. We congratulate all of the honorees whose work is shining a spotlight on the importance of trust and providing a roadmap for everyone to follow.”

The full list of honorees can be found HERE.  

About John Spence

John Spence has earned a reputation as a leading authority in the areas of Strategic Thinking, High-Performance Teams, Advanced Leadership Development, and Delivering Consistently Superior Customer Service, making him one of the most highly sought after executive educators and professional speakers in America. John is the author of “Awesomely Simple – Essential Business Strategies for Turning Ideas into Action,” and “Excellence By Design – The Six Key Characteristics of Outstanding Leaders.”

Last week I came across a fascinating video on one of my favorite websites in the world, TED.com. It was entitled “The beauty of data visualization,” and was presented by infographic designer David McCandless. During his presentation, David talked about how to turn complex data sets, like worldwide military spending, media buzz, Facebook status updates and all sorts of other interesting information… into beautiful yet simple diagrams where the observer could quickly visualize the “pattern” that the data yielded once it was turned from numbers and words… into an infographic representation of the information. It does not matter whether you agree or disagree with the data that David presents, I was simply awestruck by his ability to take massive amounts of information and turn it into a extremely easy to understand picture that immediately made the pattern of the information obvious. As someone who has spent their entire career looking for the “patterns” in leadership, strategy, teamwork and business success… I was almost speechless as I realized the implications this sort of tool offered for the work I am doing. Continue reading “The Pattern of Business Success” »

As most of you know, I am a fanatic reader, and typically get through 10 to 12 books a month as well as several audio books, white papers, magazines, blogs and research reports. Although the great majority of that reading is on strategy, leadership and high-performance teams, I also read a lot of career, self-help, and “personal branding” information as well.  Last week I was visiting one of my very favorite websites called ChangeThis.com and found an absolutely wonderful manifesto entitled… Continue reading “A "Must Read" on How to Distinguish Yourself” »

I just ran across a fantastic post on Mitch Joel’s blog that I felt was too good not to pass along. If you would like several truly excellent ideas on how to improve your meetings than you really need to read this: 15 Ways to Have a Better Meeting - AND be sure to read all of the comments – there are several more excellent ideas for improving your meetings among the many comments!!!

And, if you would like to read a great book to help you better understand how social media will impact your life and your business, Mitch’s Six Pixels of Separation would be in my top five.

I also wanted to share a short video I just put together for  my very good friends at RESULTS.com, an international consulting and coaching firm of Business Execution Experts. I can tell you with 100% confidence that one of the absolute greatestes challenges most compnaies face today is Effective Execution! They know WHAT to do — they just can’t seem to figure HOW to get thier entire team engaged and focused with discipline, cadence and an ownership mentality.

Well, that is exactly what the folks at RESULTS.com specialize in, and I am extremely proud that they are using my book “Awesomely Simple” as one of their key references for assisting thier clients (along with Jim Collins’ Good to Great and other superb books) in taking sound business strategies and turning them into positve action in thier organizations. However, the terminalogy I use in my book around Vision, Mission and Values is slightly different than that used by RESULTS.com – so I put together this short video to help their clients (and you) get a very clear handle on what these concepts really mean.  I hope you find this of value…

RESULTS.com – Core Purpose, Vision, Core Values BHAG from John Spence on Vimeo.

I was recently contacted by a wonderful young lady named Emily Thomas, who contributes articles to a web site called “Online College Degrees.” As one might assume, the site is pretty much what the name says it is: a place to find out more about how to get an on-line degree… but their blog has some really fun and cool postings such as: 100 Amazingly Insightful People You Can Learn from on Twitter or 100 Exciting and Innovative Lectures for Every Kind of Entrepreneur or 10 Most Successful and Famous College Dropouts. Emily asked if she could put together a guest blog for my site and I enthusiastically agreed. I really like what she came up with, a posting on “co-creation” a topic I’ve studied for several years (I especially like the GoldCorp example – one of my very favorites). I hope you enjoy Emily’s article, I think it shares some very important ideas. Continue reading “A Great Guest Blog on Co-creation!” »

Recently I have had the chance to talk to a lot of business people about what they are focused on for survival and success in 2010. During just the last three weeks, I delivered a session for the national sales meeting of a mid-sized industrial manufacturing company, taught two sessions to the combined executive teams and board of directors from 17 different companies, taught a strategic thinking/planning class at the Wharton School of Business to 120 executives from the financial industry and spent three fantastic days at the Inc. Magazine GrowCo event in Orlando, FL with 400+ rabid entrepreneurs… WOW!

So what is the takeaway from all of this interaction? Continue reading “Some Powerful Feedback About How to Succeed in 2010” »

I wanted to kick the New Year off with something powerful, a message that I felt would be truly helpful to you and your business. So, after more than 15 years as a management consultant and reading upwards of 1,500 business books, this is what I feel is at least one of the main keys to building and sustaining a highly successful business: Continue reading “The John Spence Formula for Business Success” »

I ran across this article this morning on the Harvard Business Publishing website (if you are not already a member, you should be, they have loads of hugely valuable articles and information on the site) and thought that it really hit the nail on the head. This is some extremely sage advice from someone with 25+ years as a high level executive. I think you’re going to find some truly valuable ideas in this wonderful interview… Continue reading “Lessons Learned from 30 Years of Leadership” »