Has your company ever hired an independent, unbiased, external third party consultant for any reason? If so, what processes did you use to locate, qualify, engage, manage and rate the performance of the consultants? Were you able to get the "right" consultant at the "right" price? Did the consultant deliver what they promised at the start of the project? How many consultants were allowed to "bid" on the proposed project? What criteria did your personnel apply during the consultant selection process? How did you justify hiring an external consultant to assist with the project? What process did you utilize to assess the quality of the consultant's proposal? Does your company maintain a portfolio of qualified consultants? What is the relationship between project timeline and consulting fees? Who in your company is responsible for constructing and managing the external consultant network? How is your company leveraging "the consult" as a value delivery system...

Have you recently lost your job due to a major company restructuring or a performance-connected "firing"? Have the faltering world economic conditions motivated your particular company to execute a rapid downsizing in personnel? How long will you remain unemployed? How will you meet all those pressing financial obligations on the books? When is the last time that you had to participate in a job interview session? Is your resume up-to-date? What are the critical factors to consider as you begin the process of applying for future career paths? Will you repeat past job application mistakes? What should you do and consider as you enter "the job hunt"...

What is the distinction between an employee who experiences a "job layoff" and an employee who was "fired"? Is one label less painful than the other? What justifies massive job layoff patterns at a particular company? When and why should an employer fire an employee? What is the proper method of conducting a necessary reduction in the number of employees? What steps should a supervisor pursue in preparation for the firing of an employee? Under what circumstances might an employer immediately dismiss an employee versus give him/her a series of warnings? When does an employee deserve a series of warnings before being fired by an employer? How many warnings are appropriate before an employee dismissal occurs? Are you thoroughly familiar with the standard operating procedures associated with "the firing line"...

Have your strategy development efforts stalled? Are your strategy development teams puzzled when it comes to the generic strategic options available to your company? What are the obvious distinctions when comparing the four generic strategic options of aggressive growth, maintain industry position, grow cash and restructure? Is it possible to mix or blend strategic options within a business unit, across a department, division or corporate entity without experiencing chaos? What roles do the dimensions of geography and technology play in strategic option planning? Are the four generic strategic options antagonistic or synergistic? How does the choice of strategic options impact capital investment decisions? What is the "options outlook" for your particular enterprise...

How are your personnel making critical business decisions? Is your company using random, non-standardized approaches or applying systematic, logical methodologies? How many decisions are your personnel making each day, each week, each month or each year? Are most of your decisions made by individuals, small groups, or formalized teams? Has your company pushed critical decision-making processes downward to lower echelons of staffing or are top-level managers attempting all the major decisions? Are your personnel at all levels well-versed and trained in effective decision-making process tools? How many of the decisions made within your company are considered high-impact versus low-impact ones? Is your staff involved in joint decision-making processes with customers, business partners and complementary industry players? How well does your company understand the "reflective routine" of critical decision-making...

As you prepare to hire new personnel for your company, do you fully comprehend what traits, signals or indicators to monitor as you conduct the interview process with a host of diverse employment candidates? What interview questions are you asking and why? What type of interview processes are you utilizing? Are your job postings creative, descriptive and thought-provoking from the perspective of potential job candidates? Do you have an abundance of qualified job candidates knocking on your front door or are you desperate for qualified, passionate, and skilled employees? What actions is your company taking to create a pool of qualified job candidates in the local community? How well do you understand the impact of skills/talents, personal interests and values when it comes to the assessment of job candidates? Do you need some "hiring hints"...

How many of your new or revised strategies are never fully executed? Why are all those creative strategies merely collecting daily dust in abandoned file drawers? What do the majority of companies spend substantial company resources to invest in strategic plans that never see the light of day? Why develop and approve a strategy that your company personnel cannot or will not execute? Who is responsible for the execution of strategy? Who should write the plan of execution? Who should manage the plan of execution? Who in your company must be committed to completing the execution phase of a strategy? What “payoff” results from the execution of strategy and who reaps the benefits? What are those benefits? How do you link “reinforcement plans” to the successful execution of strategy? Who are the effective “change mechanics” within your company? How do “check-steps” pay a role during the execution of strategy? How can your company “measure the progress” of the execution of strategy? Why do so many enterprises repetitively practice the “exit execution” of strategy...

How many of your employees would rate as "exceptional" performers? How often do you speak with them about their exceptional performances and appropriately reinforce them for the "value-generating" behaviors that they consistently exhibit? What reinforcement techniques, tools and approaches are you systematically applying across the various levels of job performances manifested across your employee population? How do you know what each employee desires when it comes to a special reinforcement award? How effective are your performance awards when it comes to sustaining desirable employee behaviors? What are the most effective rewards to use with your employee population and why? Have you experimented with a diversity of reinforcement tools? What are the "reinforcement routes" residing in your company toolkit...

Is it what you do or how you do it? When it comes to performing a task, is there a singular "correct" way to perform the task and multiple "wrong" ways to perform the task? What happens to job quality when five people have identical job descriptions and yet each one executes the job roles and responsibilities in a distinctly different way? How much freedom and diversity are you allowing your employees to enjoy as they perform their daily duties? Are you training each of your employees regarding how to perform their job correctly or merely hoping they will discover the correct way after weeks, months and years of trial and error experiences? What defines the "correct" way and the "wrong" way of executing a job task? Is there a spectrum of job performance efficiency levels that lie between the "right" way and the "wrong" way extremes? Are you evaluating job performances in the "right" way or the "wrong" way? Hum...

Why is it so difficult and complex to get a single thought transferred correctly from one end of a line of people to the other end without severe corruption of the intended message? When you start a message at one end of the line and ask each person to quickly transfer the original thought down the line to each consecutive member of the line the unfortunate end result is a message at the far end of the line that barely resembles the original message. Somehow and for some reason the message is diluted, altered, reshaped, or embellished. Do people purposely distort the original message? Are people merely attempting to be creative to brighten up their day? How many people are manipulating or spinning the original message in order to support a personal agenda in a deceitful way? How many people will admit to corrupting the original message and how many people will admit their evil intent? Why can so much go so wrong so quickly when attempting to accurately execute "thought transfer"...

Are you wondering why sales revenues are sliding southward, expenses are a rising tide and profits have virtually vanished before your very eyes? How many employees, supervisors, managers, department heads, division directors and executive staff does your particular infrastructure support? How many business units compose the complex conglomerate that attempts to keep step with the fast-paced marketplace? Do you have a sales department, a marketing department, a technical service department, a research & development department, a purchasing department, a logistics department, a complaints department, a shipping department, a customer service or support department, a billing department, a benefits & compensation department and a human resources department? Are you a small, medium or large company manifesting the symptoms of "destructive disconnects"...

Imagine your business as a living, breathing, natural organism with anticipated limitations, emotional and physical response mechanisms and a stream of normal needs. Are you diligently in the process of systematically and consciously converting all those natural biological capabilities and dimensions of the business organism to machine-based bionic or artificial body parts in a frantic attempt to enhance sagging performance levels or substitute for the "natural" shortcomings? Have you recently replaced a substantial number of people with automation and computers? Have you divested entire businesses or divisions? Why so? What well-defined criteria does your leadership team utilize to decide what goes and what stays? How do you decide when to sever the natural biological capabilities of the business and substitute the new shiny bionic part? How do your customers feel about all those bionic parts appearing on the business scene? In what phase is your enterprise when it comes to transforming the "natural" business into a "bionic" business...

Are you truly a "solution delivery" company or just wishfully claiming to be one? Is your company selling a product or a service versus delivering a complex, fully-integrated solution? How many companies use and abuse the sacred label of "solution provider" to an industry? Peruse the trade magazine advertisements, the company sponsored internet websites, the tradeshow events and webinars agendas, and the vast collections of product literature and you will surely experience the barrage of shameful "solution spins" that range from truth to highly questionable. Why are so many companies falsely applying the labels of "solution provider" or "solution deliverer" to their business model? By what criteria have those companies earned the right to market their company as a "certified" solution provider? On close inspection, are those companies who spin their company as a solution provider merely selling traditional products and services or combinations rather that delivering complex, fully-integrated solutions to their downstream clients? Where does your enterprise fall along the "solution provider" spectrum? How can you tell when your suppliers or customers are playing the "solution spin" deceit game...

Who would you say is in control of your company, of your successes or failures, of your financial cost structure, of your brands, of your corporate image, of your purchasing power, of your customer relationships, of your strategies, and/or of your career path? Who or what holds the power within and across your organization? How did the power reins get assigned to those specific people? Who determines the ultimate destination and fate of your enterprise? What actual level of meaningful control do employees, customers, suppliers, competitors, partners, complementors, and market or economic conditions possess? How well does your leadership team understand, manage and leverage the "control centers" of the business, market and economic environments in which your particular company is immersed to varying degrees...

What possesses the awesome power to lift heavy burdens with mysterious ease? What is the source of the power and how much does it cost? What is the service lifetime of such a miraculous tool? Who makes frequent use of the tool and why? Farmers, construction workers, rescue workers and machinery designers are quite familiar with "levers" and/or the basic concept of "leverage", but how many corporate heads, business leaders or managers and other employees fully comprehend and utilize the principles of "luscious leverage" during the fulfillment of their daily job duties? Are your company personnel struggling to lift the heavy burdens of the business? How effectively are your personnel applying "luscious leverage" approaches during customer visitations, tradeshow events and challenging work assignments...

Select companies are frequently void of them while other companies have elaborate, complex versions of them. How do you develop one in a cost-effective and efficient manner to minimize the pain to everyone across the enterprise? What time of year do you start them and by when should they be completed? What are the critical elements? What do people frequently forget to include in them? How much time and effort should your personnel spend developing them? How are you going to use them once you have them? Will life go on if they are missing from the enterprise? Why do they frequently find a home in the bottom drawer of the file cabinet where they rest in peace, silence and darkness? How well does your enterprise manage the "financial fiasco" dimension of the business...

If you are currently seeking your first job, how do you select an employer that you can trust? If you are currently employed how can you tell if the employer is a company with whom you should invest the remainder of your career? How can you know when it is time to change jobs and when to stay put? What are the desirable characteristics of a company on whom you can depend to protect your personal well-being? How do you know when a company is taking advantage of you? What are the foundational signals that tell you whether a career holds great potential or may be only a dead-end street? Where can you get the information that you need and from whom do you get it? How well do you understand and utilize the "thrilling threesome" criteria for a promising and satisfying career...

What is sometimes blatantly obvious and at other times cleverly disguised? What are a challenge for many and a joy for a few? What can light the way to success or cast a dark and threatening shadow? What can keep the day's activities on track or derail the best of intentions? Why are they so tough to develop and so easy to discard? How can the agenda make or break a meeting? Who should determine the agenda for a meeting and how should they develop it? When is it ok to deviate from the planned agenda? What are the critical elements of a professionally planned agenda? How can you tell when you have a quality agenda? What complements a well-planned agenda? In today's busy world how can you avoid "agenda agony" in your business environment...

What lies at the core of many businesses? What drives sustainable success or is commonly blamed for repeated failures? What is the vital precursor to the innovation of new products, services or solutions marketed by a profitable, resilient enterprise? What appears easy to accomplish, but isn't? What critical task is the responsibility of corporate, business leadership, marketing, sales, technical service, applications development, manufacturing and research and development functions? Why is it so difficult to do and so frequently neglected? How do you learn it, practice it, analyze it and benefit from it? Why is it so very important to customers and business partners? How can it send you down that mysterious hallway to nowhere or to an awesome path to profits? How can you tell the good ones from the bad ones? Where are those lucrative "needy niches" lurking...

Is change good or bad or somewhere between the extremes? How do you decide when it is time to pull the trigger on change? Do you have a magical mirror or an insightful crystal ball that clearly reveals when change is necessary, prudent and value-adding? Are your employees, customers, suppliers and business partners demanding a parade of change? Do you know how to change, what to change and when to change? How deeply do you understand the impact of change on your enterprise, on the top-line, on expenses, and on the margins? Do those who shout change the loudest know what really needs to change and why? Does change bring improvement or disaster to the business environment? Why is it so hard for change to occur? What drives change in life and business and will those changes bring positive, neutral or negative results? What is the ultimate outcome of change planning? What are the appropriate "change criteria" for business and life...

How do you reliably determine the satisfaction level of your customers? What measures, methodologies and tools are used to analyze whether your customers are joyful, disgruntled or angry with your enterprise and the behaviors displayed by your personnel? Are your sales, marketing, technical, manufacturing and business personnel treating customers with respect and admiration or with disdain and disgust? How frequently are your personnel sampling the customer landscape to test the level of customer satisfaction? How many complaints does your company get each week, each month, each period or each year? How do you respond to each complaint? Should you respond to each complaint you get, and if so, why? Does your company have a dedicated department that measures and analyzes customer complaints or are you using an external, third party consultant? Is your customer satisfaction system based on "fool's tools" or a rock solid, highly effective and efficient set of documented processes...

What devours both time and motivation? What consumes productivity and profits? What frustrates and infuriates employees? What steals the joyful passion from both business and life? Consider the statement "When I die, I hope it's in a meeting since the transition from life to death will be barely perceptible" or the insightful observation "Meetings are a substitute for action." How well does your enterprise plan and execute productive meetings? What are the various types of meetings that your firm conducts each day, each week, each month, or each year? Who leads those meetings? What are the objectives or goals of each meeting? Was the meeting necessary or simply a routine expectation? Are the meetings contributing to the success or failure of your business enterprise? Who attends each meeting and why? What are you proactively doing to manage the "meeting mush"...

When is the last time that you were using a "needle" while relaxing on top of a "haystack"? Hum, I wonder? The problem arrives only if you drop the needle! Do you remember the phrase, "it's like hunting for a needle In a haystack"? What set of circumstances allowed that needle to get in the haystack in the first place? Finding critical information or data that your business needs to make both short-term tactical and/or long-term strategic decisions is frequently analogous to searching for a needle in a haystack. Where do you look first? What are the reliable sources of information? How do cross-check information for validity? How can the information ultimately assist you with gathering vital intelligence on competitors, customers and complementors? Where do you look for current and relevant public domain information on plant capacities, plant expansions, plant locations, employee population densities, financial performance, strategic directions, existing and new technologies platforms, key decision-makers and JVAA activities? How do you find "lost needles" in market haystacks...

Imagine a person equipped with running shoes and a blindfold and then placed in a dense forest of trees and thorny brush. Once positioned deep within the dense foliage, the person is asked to put on the running shoes and an assistant installs the blindfold. Now the person is ready to proceed! So which direction should he/she run when the starter yells, "go"? What will be the consequences for the runner? What barriers is the person likely to encounter during the sprint to the imaginary finish line? Where is the finish line? What are the risks to the runner's personal safety? What is the probable outcome of such foolish behaviors? And yet, many business leaders attempt to run a business in the absence of an efficient and effective business and/or market research process. Is your enterprise employing frequent and/or ongoing market research to achieve success? What information are you collecting? Who designs and executes the market research effort? Who analyzes the final results of your market research? At what point do you leverage the knowledge gained via business/market research? How are you preserving the learnings for future generations of employees and managers? Or are you simply "running blind" in a dark, dense forest...

Think for a moment about the number of customers that your particular business serves! How many total customers do you have? Is it 10, 100, 1,000, 10,000 or more? What are the unique characteristics of each customer or category of customers? How well do you understand the buyer purchase criteria, buying processes and competitive environments of the customer population? When is the last time that your enterprise completed a primary business research project designed to assess the market forces and shifting economic influences that are impacting your customer base? Are your customers small, medium or large in size? What is the nature of the downstream markets served by your customer mix? What types of business models are your customers operating and why? Can you clearly articulate the value proposition of your customer? Have you documented the value delivery systems that the customer utilizes...

Do you consider your business enterprise a rather complicated animal or quite simplistic in its nature? How many business decisions are you making each day and how would you rate the complexity of each decision? Are most of your business decisions made by large, medium or small groups of people or by authoritarian individuals? How long does it take your personnel to make a decision on a relatively minor issue as opposed to a rather gigantic, complex one? Are your managers, leaders and the general employee population trained and adept in the art of timely decision-making? Does your leadership team spend more time arguing their ego-centric, diverse positions and hidden agendas than they spend arriving at a value-adding business decision? How many times have you heard a person in a leadership position boldly state "this situation is so complex that we don't have time to utilize any process"? Think carefully about the lack of logic in that shocking statement...

When is the last time that your business spent time developing a strategy? What systematic process does your enterprise utilize to develop corporate, business, marketing, sales force, technology and/or manufacturing strategies? To what degree are the various individual strategies of your organization integrated and synergistic? Are your strategies the result of a qualified, passionate team effort or does a single individual set the strategic path for the future of the company? How effective were previous strategies? What is the ratio of successes to failures when it comes to effectively implementing strategic plans for the business? How well does each and every member of your company understand the approved, official strategy? Can employees at each level within your enterprise succinctly and clearly articulate the company's strategy for success? Are your employees passionate about the present strategy and working diligently to fulfill the vision, mission and strategy of the enterprise...

As you visit with your customers what questions are you asking and why? What do you anticipate doing with the numerous responses that your team gathers during those lengthy meetings and expensive lunches? Are your customers reluctant to dispense meaningful answers to your insightful questions or are they a free-flowing fountain of valuable information? Will the facts and figures that your sales team, technical representatives, marketing staff, and business leaders so diligently collect and document assist with value-laden tactical and strategic decisions of your business enterprise? How frequently do your personnel meet with customers and which customers get the bulk of the attention? Is the content of each meeting merely "fluff" or are customer conversations substantive in nature? Are your company personnel "mining markets" during customer engagements or talking trivia...

Have you recently told your employees that they are your "most valuable asset" and yet you are cutting their jobs, eroding their benefits and offering miniscule opportunities for career growth? Does your particular company have a qualified, effective "mentoring" program for each and every employee? Are you providing employees with company paid training opportunities so that they can grow their skills and talents? Are you setting the stage for a series of damaging expectations to ferment within the minds of employees? How long does the average employee remain with your company before they feel compelled to seek out "greener pastures"? Do your employees enjoy multiple reinforcing components of their compensation and benefits packages? Are you paying employees a cost of living increase plus a performance-based incentive? Do your employees get a "year end bonus" if the company performs well on the bottom-line? Are you providing employees with stock options and comprehensive medical, Rx and dental benefits? Is your company in an employee reduction mode or growth state? Are you hiring or firing? Has employee loyalty declined over the past few months or years? Why so...

How healthy is your company in the currently depressed and grim complexity of the global economy? How many employees have you already cut from the payroll? Have you sternly requested that all your employees and managers reduce or cease participation in third party training programs, expensive trade shows or exhibitions, costly golf outings, extravagant customer entertainment events and capital intensive lab and plant equipment purchases? How much longer will your company be able to survive inflated raw material prices, rising healthcare costs, surging energy bills and skyrocketing transportation fees? Are your customers happy with all those price increases that you have attempted over the past few months? How many formerly loyal customers has your company lost due to rising prices over the past few months? Are your customers optimistic, pessimistic or neutral regarding the financial success state of their business during the unfolding recessionary period...

How much does your CEO pull down on an annual basis? What are the various components of the CEO compensation formula? Could it be that your CEO is overpaid or underpaid? Who sets the pay scale for the CEO of your enterprise, the Board of Directors or your stockholders or an independent third party? Does your CEO undergo a job performance assessment each quarter and each year prior to the adjustment of his/her annual compensation package? What specific criteria are utilized to judge the performance level of your CEO and other Senior Managers? Is the CEO paid the same amount whether the company turns a huge profit or is bleeding red ink? Is there a scarcity of people who hold the proper credentials to lead a company down a successful path? Surely not! Are the stockholders of your company demanding the CEO receive a substantial pay cut if the financial performance of the company is extremely poor...

If an "actual" contraction is less than the "forecasted" contraction, one might choose to label the phenomenon as an "optimistic contraction"? Hum, interesting political spin on a set of economic conditions that are slowly sliding into a very deep recession pit while the world watches? And whether one sees the economic glass of water as half-full or half-empty, the water in the glass may ultimately deliver a tainted, bitter taste to the thirsty recipient. Scan the economic horizons these days and you'll see an abundance of job layoffs across diverse manufacturing and service industries, rampant inflation in food prices, rising fuel and health care costs and a USA GDP rate adorned with a receding hairline. The consumer spending patterns in the USA have no doubt stalled, except for the costly necessities of life. Consumers are growing more uneasy with the failing health of financial institutions, the declining value of their home investments and the deep pocketbook sinkhole aggravated by greedy gasoline prices. What definitive, positive actions is your company pursuing to ease the escalating anxiety levels of the shell-shocked consumer in the USA? Do you believe in "optimistic contractions" of the economic environment? And how does the water in the glass taste to you on a hot, thirsty afternoon? What steps are you taking to safeguard the profits of your enterprise from the dangers lurking in the deep, dark recession pit...

Has your company unfortunately missed the nano-wagon? Has the nano-train already left the station and you're not on it? Do you remember the Leadership Team Meeting where the Business Strategist advised, "Nanotechnology is a potential, lucrative, high growth" market." And to quench the momentary excitement was quickly followed by a stern statement from the Technology Director, "Nanotechnology will never amount to anything substantial." Sound familiar? What is the proven qualitative and quantitative value of nanotechnology in global, regional and local markets? Who is willing to pay for such a "small" thing and how much are they willing to pay? To what degree is nanotechnology generating sales revenues and profits across global markets and for whom? Where are today's and tomorrow's profit centers for evolving nanotechnology located? Does your company have an abundance of firmly entrenched "nano naysayers" or are you joyfully positioning your enterprise for success in multiple nanotechnology dimensions? How much is "small" worth to the large world of potentially profitable buyers...

What actions are you taking to create and maintain "profit-generating" buyers for your products, services, solutions and for your company stock? Are you planning on selling your enterprise or a part of your enterprise at some point in the near or distant future? How is your leadership team daily demonstrating the value of your company's value delivery systems? Do the members of your company fully understand and clearly communicate the enterprise's value proposition to the marketplace? Are you creating buyers in both the vertical and horizontal dimensions of the business world? Do your sales and technical service personnel possess and deliver an articulate picture of customer need "voids"? Does your business maintain an integrated set of synergistic value delivery systems that facilitate the value proposition of the holistic enterprise? In order to sell your products, services, solutions, your company stock and/or your business model, you must be creating "profit-generating" buyers on a daily, ongoing basis...

Who inside your company is monitoring and interpreting the Federal Register's evolving rules on air pollutant emissions? Does your enterprise have an executable, cost-effective plan for regulatory compliance? How will the "National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants: Paint Stripping and Miscellaneous Surface Coating Operations at Area Sources" impact your particular business path? And when is a rule a "final" rule when it comes to government regulations? Hum...

What motives are driving your acquisition attempts? What tactical and strategic factors does your leadership consider and analyze before attempting to acquire a target company? Are you seeking to grow top-line revenue and bottom-line profits? Does your enterprise desire to strengthen its geographic positioning across the globe? Is your company seeking to enter a new market segment? Do you desire to add a new technology dimension to the business? How compatible are the cultures of any acquired companies? What will be the ultimate impact of each and every acquisition on your sustainability objectives, financial margins and profitable growth goals...

When one examines carefully the U.S. economic signals of the present time mostly "down abounds"! Single-family home sales continue to slow marking the slowest pace in 13 years. January 2008 new single family home sales dropped 2.8% from December 2007 and 33.9% below the January 2007 levels per the Department of Commerce's February 27 report. The seasonally adjusted rate for new single family home sales was pegged at 588,000 units...

Successful companies usually have a comprehensive, multi-dimensional, yet cost-effective plan, to "advance their cause" in competitive environments! Would you classify your company as "passive" or "proactive" in the business world...

What's in a name or a brand? What is an acceptable lifetime for a brand? What are the pros and cons of changing brands in mid-stream? How can brands be used to positively spin the value proposition of the event or product in question? Does your company or organization have a proven, well-defined and documented process for the "branding" of products, services, solutions and industry events? For example, what images are conjured up when the words "American Coatings Show & Conference" or "BASF Color Solutions" roll off the tongue or excite the eye? How much deep thought, creative effort and strategic planning goes into branding trade shows or restructured businesses? Are creative, meaningful, impactful names a vital part of both the short-term and long-term strategy for the enterprise? Do the visible labels attached to trade shows, events, expos, conferences, training, and business units create the desired corporate image in the marketplace...

What are the criteria for earning a job title of "vice-president" in your particular company? What criteria determine when an employee is assigned the vice-president crown? How many vice-presidents does your company have on the payroll? How many vice-presidents does your company really need to get the job done? Are there too many "chiefs" and not enough "warriors" in the organization? What are the job responsibilities of a vice-president level employee? Why during the past few years are so many companies proudly publicizing the number of vice-presidents that they have on their organizational charts? Has the vice-president level become so commonplace in the organizational structure that it now carries little lasting prestige for the holder...

What is the ultimate in luxury and convenience? Would you love to have "powered drawers" that open automatically with a light touch of the human hand? It's one of the evolving trends in the evolving furniture industry. The IMM Cologne furniture fair drew 107,000 visitors from 130 countries, up slightly from the 106,000 who attended the show in 2007. Of those, an estimated 31,000 were international visitors and another 21,000 were consumers who dropped in during the days the show was extended to the public. In the 2007 show report, officials estimated that 40% or 42,000 visitors were from abroad and 34,000 were consumers. The report did not specify how many international visitors were from the United States, but noted that more visitors came from the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, France and Switzerland. Also higher numbers were reported for attendance from Eastern Europe, the Middle East, South America and Africa. The Jan 14-20, 2008 event drew 1,251 exhibitors from 53 countries, compared to 1,301 participating companies from 57 countries in 2007. Of the 2008 exhibitor pool, 428 were companies from Germany and 823 were from abroad...

Who is teaming up with whom in the world and why? Has your business enterprise discovered how to conduct profitable collaborative efforts with complementary partners across the global landscape in an efficient and cost-effective manner? How can you profitably grow your business when you "team up" with a compatible complementor in an opportunity rich environment? Is your leadership team a group of eager team players or in the "go-it-alone" state of mind...

What do you get when you combine solvents (or water), additives, pigments, fillers, catalysts and resins at the appropriate ratios utilizing sequential, timed stages of addition and mixing? Hum, could it be profitable paint and/or coatings formulations for downstream clients? What totality of factors contributes to the success of a paint and coatings company? One of the foundational elements of the paint and coatings industry is the priceless, approved and proven "formula" book. Where would paint and coatings manufacturers turn if suddenly the "formulary" vanished from the laboratory shelves? Paint companies own literally thousands of archived and active formulations based on hundreds of raw materials, many of which are leveraged across multiple formulations...

Who's inventing the market, technology and manufacturing "solutions" that will generate the handsome profits of tomorrow? Are your business leaders able to recognize the signals that reveal the hidden opportunities for profitable customer-driven solutions? Is your leadership team customer or market centric or stuck in the traditional product or service centric rut of yesterday? Is it possible to "deliver solutions" in addition to "selling products and services" within the paint and coatings value system? Are paint and coatings companies leaving money on the financial table? What innovative companies are striving to "deliver coatings-related industry solutions" to downstream clients? How do companies identify "profitable solutions" that fill unmet customer needs across the paint and coatings industry? How successful are companies that shift their efforts from a product or service oriented business model to a "solution delivery" business model? What skills and talents does a company need to successfully complete a transition to a "solution delivery" business model? How can companies "leverage" their enterprise into a "solution delivery" profitable business model? Are paint and coatings manufacturers allowing their customers to develop their own solutions, why so? How can paint and coatings firms "step out" of tradition and into exceptional, profitable growth domains...

Are you tracking success and failures for your company? How do you determine what constitutes a "success" and what constitutes a "failure"? What metrics is your enterprise utilizing to efficiently and effectively monitor business progress in a meaningful fashion? What is the success to failure performance ratio for each of your business units as well as for the holistic enterprise? How are you managing the failures and rewarding the successes? Who bears the major responsibility for each success and each failure? What positive or negative consequences are associated with each success and/or each failure that occurs...

How "in tune" are you with your customer's desires and preferences on a host of topics? How frequently do you visit with critical customers and what consistent and relevant questions are you asking while visiting with each of them? Who are the key decision makers at each customer account? How are you collecting, documenting, preserving, analyzing and applying the vast number of customer responses that you are receiving? In what manner are your customers "segmented" and what is the rationale for the chosen segmentation patterns? And likewise, how "in tune" are the personnel within your enterprise with supplier, competitor, collaborator, partner and complementor interfaces...

Christmas 2007 is now history. It's soon time to usher in a Happy New Year 2008. Another year past and what have you and your business accomplished? Yes, it's that dreaded or delightful time for writing major accomplishments for yourself, for the department, for the business team and for the corporate enterprise. Remember "activities" are not all "major accomplishments", unless those activities have generated "major financial or non-financial results" to substantially advance the health and/or success of the business, both the top-line and bottom-line dimensions. Well-written major accomplishments usually take the form of "X was completed because of Y and resulted in Z for the business", where X= the activity, Y= the reason or driver and Z= the favorable result. Many employees, team leaders, department heads, business managers and CEOs spend an excess of their valuable time on activities or busy work that actually results in little to no advancement of the business financials, image, brand or growth in the local, regional, national or global markets...

Christmas 2007 has almost arrived on the scene? How much are you spending on the glitter and the gifts for friends and family? Emptying all your personal and family budgets as quickly as possible? Told your spouse to spend everything before December 31 or else you won't give them money for next year's necessary expenses? During what months do you spend most of your personal income and why? Do you attempt to spend the entirety of your family budget before the year is over? Why not? Oh, saving something for next year, eh? Holding some cash in reserve, eh? During what quarterly periods do you spend the majority of your business budget? What percentage of your annual budget is spent during the final quarter of the fiscal or calendar year for the business...

Economic forecasts are a lot like the flashing lights on a Christmas tree, constantly shifting patterns with blended moments of light and darkness that are highly unpredictable. How skilled are your business leaders at predicting when the economic tree will slide into a dark state or emerge into sparkling brilliance? Great uncertainty resides in the outlook for the U.S. and other global economies. Analysts display a confusing range of pondered perspectives in their fickle fantasy forecasts for U.S. and other world economies. Two of the major impact factors are the depth and duration of the housing recession and the great unknowns of the credit crunch, particularly for the U.S. economy. When conditions are so fluid, it is difficult to make accurate forecasts. Considerable disparity exists among the economic forecasters, whether government, NGOs or private firms. Some would say that recent projections look "out of whack" for these "blended moments"...

What processes do color forecasters utilize to predict future trends in color preferences for fashions, home décor, furniture, automobiles and paint? How reliable are those color trend prediction processes? Are predictions based on historical color cycles, consumer mood, precise mathematical algorithms or soft qualitative factors? How many critical dimensions exist within the color trend prediction model? Who is routinely, systematically checking the accuracy of the color trend predictions? What combinations of factors in a culture drive color preferences and the timing of those preferences? Do color trend forecasters truly predict color preferences or simply create color preferences at the subconscious level in the mind of the manufacturer and consumer...

What variety of channels to market does your business model utilize? What are the pros, cons and challenges associated with each channel to market? What is the relative efficiency of each of the channels to market that you employ? What qualitative and quantitative value is each channel adding to your business units? How many customers utilize each channel that your business offers and why? What criteria did your company utilize to select the service providers for each channel in the portfolio? How much profit does each channel to market siphon off or add to your bottom-line? How do your downstream customers benefit from your particular channels to market portfolio composition? In what manner has your company leveraged channels to market to gain a sustainable competitive advantage in the marketplace? How frequently are you surveying the customer landscape to determine customer channel preferences and complaints...

Where are the lucrative geographic growth frontiers for the paint and coatings industry? Who are among the desirable acquisition targets within those growth frontiers? How do you determine which companies to purchase and how much they are worth? What are your "valuation criteria" for assessing companies present on your target acquisition list? What documented business processes does your enterprise systematically utilize at each stage during each and every acquisition activity? Do you have a comprehensive list of due diligence questions? Who manages and executes your acquisition and/or new business development processes? Are you utilizing qualified, independent thinking, third party companies to identify and acquire add-on companies? Is your firm considering expansion into the Indian paint market? What is the estimated size and growth rate of the domestic paint market in India and who are the key players on the scene...

Do you frequently attempt to communications with a person that just won't listen or sincerely consider sound advice designed to positively enhance their business and/or personal life experiences? Maybe you have a manager, colleague, friend or customer that continually rejects the majority of your wisdom. Could it be that you are a member of a distinguished team and the team leader turns a continual deaf ear to sage advice from the eager team members? Are your customers ignoring the valid value propositions offered by your enterprise's sales organization? Are potential collaborators, partners and complementors ignoring your opportunistic, synergistic-driven advances...

The investment community frequently wants to know your estimated growth numbers for sales income, expenses and profits as well as your company's strategic formula for sustainable success. How is your particular company planning to win in the competitive marketplace...

Are you closely watching the acquisition strategies of your customers, competitors, partners, collaborators and potential complementors? Which companies are your industry or sector adversaries collecting, when and why? Who serves as the outstanding benchmarks or as the "islands of excellence" within the paint and coatings industry and why? What are the strengths and weaknesses of each of the acquired companies with respect to target markets, technologies, geographic regions and business processes? How does each acquisition benefit the value delivery systems portfolio of the purchaser? How does the acquisition strengthen the purchaser's value proposition to downstream clients, partners, collaborators and complementors within the industry value system...

Are the employees, business units, manufacturing divisions, geographic locations and/or functional organizations within your corporate enterprise pulling in synergistic or antagonistic directions? To what degree are the elements of your business model and your value delivery systems unified and supportive toward executing the approved corporate strategy? Are you allowing each department to pursue their own agenda while passively watching failure of the holistic corporate objectives? Does the left hand truly know what the right hand is doing? Are your marketing, sales, business, technical, purchasing, manufacturing and supply chain organizations connected, communicating and in sync...

Are "youthful preferences" a marketing portal and staging platform to forthcoming "adult purchasing" patterns and behaviors? To what degree does your company understand the demographic profiles of targeted geographic regions? How are disposable income and spending patterns distributed across demographic age groups in various sectors of world markets? Who spends and who saves within the consumer population...

In the economic world there are pessimists and optimists and everything in between the two extremes. Where do your perspectives on the global economic trends fall? What industries will drive the forthcoming direction of your sales revenues, expenses and profit margins? Are your sales, marketing, business and technical personnel in sync, communicating and connected to the profitable growth frontiers of the global landscape? Where do your teams turn to gain insights into emerging economic outlook...

A profitable legacy product's sales volumes begin to slide downhill and an eager innovation employee in the company champions the product's replacement candidates…then what happens? Imagine that the technology group in your company desires to introduce a new product to the market, but the leader of the business unit says "no, it will cannibalize the sales of a profitable legacy product that continues in the short-term to be very successful with customers". Or maybe a set of loyal, but obstinate customers, refuse to purchase a step-change or long-time unsuccessful heritage product that an enthusiastic product steward in your company believes should sell due to its inherent value...

How is your business leveraging governmental resources and legislation on a daily basis? Does your enterprise view the federal, state and/or local government as foe or ally when it comes to executing day-to-day or long-term strategic growth plans? How much time are your leadership and management personnel spending constructing and maintaining personal and business relationships with legislators in various parts of the world...

What is on the mind of the consumer when they walk into that retail paint store to purchase their next gallon of paint? What factors is the consumer considering as they scan the crowded, confusing paint brands displayed in the aisles of Wal-Mart, Home Depot and Lowe's stores...

What is the degree of "mindset congruency" between your company and other critical players in your value system? Is your "mindset" fact or fiction? What evidence supports that your "mindset" will lead to profitable financials and a long-term, sustainable competitive position with the consumer landscape in the chosen marketplace...

What actions is the leadership team pursuing to identify the changing values, attitudes and profitable opportunities behind each of the mega-trends operative across Europe, North America, Latin America and Asia-Pacific...

Who knows what regarding your company's strategy? Does your company have a well-documented strategy that is deeply understood by each and every employee, particularly the elements that each employee or group of employees is expected to execute? Is your leadership team monitoring the complex and shifting strategies of customers, competitors, complementors and business partners on a consistent, ongoing basis...

How is your firm monitoring the hoard of competitive threats? What are the various key categories of competitive threats to a business enterprise? Where are the most dangerous, high impact competitive threats lurking in the deep, dark shadows of the market? What are disruptive technology threats, who generates them and how do they impact your business...

Where did all the time go? Why are busy Americans and other consumers so short on time? Are there business opportunities emerging from the prevalent scarcity of time...

What recent changes has the IMF (International Monetary Fund) predicted for world economies? How many of your company's value delivery systems are situated in each geographic region of the world...

Are you daily pondering how to expand or enhance the enterprise's value delivery systems and achieve timely, profitable growth for the business? How well do you comprehend the diverse elements of your value delivery systems and their respective margin contributions...

Is your firm formulating and delivering profitable coatings "solutions" to clients in the cell or mobile phone industry? Who's the claimed market leader in cell phone technology and sales? Which cell phone styles and manufacturers are gaining or losing market share...

What are the dynamics of the construction industry in the USA, China, Middle East, Australia, India and Canada? Is the growth in the residential or non-residential segments...

What fraction of your product or technology portfolio delivers unique specialty, high performance benefits to downstream customers? Are you capturing the deserved and anticipated level of unit value for each of the products...

What is the health or condition of the USA economy? Where are key economic indicators pointing? What is the short-term outlook? What economic indicators are your business leaders watching on a regular basis...

How well do you understand the demographic trends and behaviors of geographic, cultural and customer clusters? How will cultural preferences and traditional behaviors impact top-line revenue streams and bottom-line profit pictures of your business model...

Competitive technologies originate from a myriad of strange places and for a host of market-driven reasons. Competitive technology may be direct, indirect or horizon in nature...

How well focused is your company's R&D effort? How are you judging the performance of the enterprise's R&D programs and personnel...

Singapore appears destined to perform as strong growth center within the world economy. What is the current state of the economy in Singapore? Is Singapore a favorable site for long-term capital investments...

What changes and linked product opportunities are anticipated for the developing home environment of 2007? How might shifting consumer preferences and desires impact the product/service mix of your business...

What secrets does the European growth radar reveal regarding the health of the economy for 2007 and 2008? What assumptions reside beneath any growth optimism...

How does the existence of a "complex product mix" within a business translate into a "profitable business opportunity"? What are the critical elements of a successful business model...

DuPont's first-quarter earnings rocketed 16 percent, assisted by higher seed sales and improved pharmaceuticals income. The company achieved net income of $945 million (11.6% of total sales), or $1.01 per share, up from $817 million, or 88 cents per share, in the first quarter of 2006...

What the heck is an "industry-based business model"? Why could such a business model be expected to improve performance and accelerate the growth of a company...

When the USA economy stumbles, the whole world experiences the fall, right? Apparently not! According to IMF analysis and perspectives, the global economy will most likely weather any slowdown in US economic growth because dependence on exports to America is declining in importance...

What can touch us, yet without any physical contact? What can make us feel warm, cool, relaxed or tense? What can convey spaciousness or confinement...

Watch the daily press releases and you will recognize many planned and/or executed business deals, but how many of those deals are ultimately successful for the business partners and the stakeholders? When a business deal is finally executed, many complex transformations must occur in a timely fashion for the deal to add true value to partners, financial stakeholders, complementors and customers...

The Earth is estimated to weigh in at 5.972 sextillion (5,972,000,000,000,000,000,000) metric tons. On the other end of the size spectrum, consider the future existence of virus-assembled, nanotechnology-based batteries in the form of thin, transparent sheets that look like plastic wrap...

How can one keep a family-owned business healthy and growing in the fast-paced economic environment of today? What types of investments make profitable sense for the business...

What role are complementors playing in your business strategy? What level of top-line and bottom-line profits are complementors delivering as they serve the stakeholder population? What is your margin outlook for 2007...

Is your business model local, regional or global? How deeply do you understand the impact of shifting economic conditions on the current and future state of your business success? When is the last time that you took an economic stroll and discussed the findings with the members of your management team...

Under what rocks are corporate profit opportunities hiding? If the USA economic growth rates are predicted to slow during 2007 due to a continued weakness in housing, where will CEOs turn to achieve profit goals for stakeholders...

What is happening in the earnings gallery? Who's achieving success in the financial dimension? How did 2006 compare with 2005...

What industry and market trends are you monitoring daily and why? How well do you understand the linkage between the industry or market trends and the top-line and bottom-line performance of your respective business models...

What methods does your company employ to develop the demand forecast for your products and/or services each year? Are you using (1) straight-line, fixed rate, (2) complex, multi-dimensional, (3) resource intensive, customer interactive, (4) single or multi-dimension, trend/driver linked, (5) industry growth associated, (6) industry expert modified, or (7) seat-of-the-pants algorithms...

Imagine yourself on an exciting journey from current state to future state of the business. All of sudden you find yourself surrounded by a circular, very tall, ominous wall...

How are you presently packaging the value delivered by your business enterprise? Are you generating value only to later give it away, free of charge? Does step-change value actually reside in the holistic package and not in the individual components of the package contents...

Are you looking for a dance partner for 2007 and beyond? Ford Motor Company recently renewed its long-time partnership with Sherwin-Williams Automotive Finishes Corp...

Imagine sitting inside a building that has no transparent windows or visible doorways to the outside world. What is happening outside at the moment? How is the weather, sunny or stormy...

As 2006 draws to a close, it is an appropriate time to take a look at a variety of perspectives active in the world’s business and economic sectors...

The effective and efficient execution of differentiated innovation processes creates a degree of sustainable differentiated bottom-line profits for business enterprises...

What is the health of the German chemical industry? What are the predicted trends for sales revenues and employment levels...

When company margins are pinched does your company slide quickly into the cost-cutting mode? Are you repeatedly attempting to save your way to higher margins? Are you hoping that by reducing costs, your company can return to prosperity...

What do the prevailing signals say regarding current and future business conditions? What signals have your undivided attention each and every day? How do you know if the monitored signals are closely linked to the performance level of your enterprise...

Strategic planning sessions normally include a phase during which the leadership team must generate and select among a limited series of viable strategic options. How many strategic options are reasonable for the business to consider...

How often are you leveraging your competitors across your business model? Who are your direct, indirect and horizon competitors? What are your competitors doing and when and why and how...

ICI makes paints, including the Dulux brand and specialty chemicals, and reported that adjusted net profit for the third quarter was 111 million pounds (US$211.8 million; euro166 million), up from 93 million pounds during Q3 2005...

What would you say is the core, most important element of your business model? An interesting question, eh? Find yourself struggling for a meaningful response to the question...

Most coil coaters are large consumers of natural gas. One exception is the coaters who use water base coatings and find electrical IR ovens quite effective for their purposes...

It is some three years since we last profiled the largest paint and coatings manufacturers in the world. During the prior five year period we progressed steadily from covering the 50 largest companies to eventually the 100 largest...

Who were the world's leaders based on top-line sale revenue in paints, coatings, adhesives, sealants and related products during 2005? Five of the leaders were headquartered in the USA, two in Germany, one in UK and two in the Netherlands...

When is the last time that you conducted a thorough and informative customer satisfaction survey across your customer population? Are you asking relevant questions? Are you sampling the critical customer targets across multiple decision-maker contact points...

When volume is low, demand niche-limited, pricing level high and profit margin exceptional does that signal that a company has a specialty or high performance product...

So where is all the nanotechnology taking up residence in world markets? How about (1) a washing machine that sanitizes clothes with billions of tiny silver ions, (2) sunscreen and cosmetics formulated with nano particles, (3) canola oil intended to block cholesterol, (4) the iPod Nano toy, (5) high performance tennis racquet composites, (6) socks that can keep you cool or warm, (7) high efficiency nutrient delivery systems and (8) packaging that can warn the consumer that the contents inside are potentially deadly...

Where are those profitable business opportunities in the paint and coatings industry hiding these days? Frequently business leaders spend the majority of their time seeking out the holy grail of growth and thus overlook the lucrative niches camouflaged within existing, more mature market sectors of the traditional paint and coatings segments...

When the USA or other major economies stall, so do many connected and dependent regional economies of the world. Collective opinions are painting a picture of a world economic slowdown during the next two years...

Have you carefully identified a targeted set of customers or are you randomly attempting to attract customers to your products and/or service offering with lackluster success...

The Mexican automotive industry growth is primarily driven by the top five foreign auto manufacturers in Mexico including General Motors, Ford Motor, DaimlerChrysler, Nissan and Volkswagen. Where is Honda and Toyota...

Why sell architectural paint at $12 to $25 per gallon when you can sell architectural paint at $50-60 per gallon in Canada? The manufacturer of C2 claims that nothing on the market can match its coverage ability, scrub ability and quality...

Many astute employees would voice that their respective CEOs are not exceptional in the listening department. Why not? Why are CEO's "great tellers", but often not open-minded listeners...

How does one pick the "write" paint? The humble pencil is the flagship product of the Faber Castell group, the world’s top producer of wood-cased pencils. More than 6,000 dealers and employees compose the Faber Castell Group of companies worldwide...

UBS analysts predict that global economic growth is likely to cool in 2007 and believe that growth is likely to decelerate to 3.5% in 2007, led by U.S. growth declining to 2.5%...

Periodically it is appropriate to exit the existing constraints of reality and ponder what might be if we all could for a moment scale the traditional walls that imprison us and ask some rather unusual questions...

Paint and coatings companies spend a great deal of time formulating products for their valued downstream clients, but how much time do they diligently spend in formulating strategy to improve the health of their business and the industry they serve? The core dimensions of a paint or coating include resins, solvents, pigments, catalysts or accelerators, cross-linkers, fillers and numerous additives...

Who resides in the elite "specialty chemical" clique? Thirty-three companies qualified by each achieving over USD one billion in "specialty" chemical sales...

With the current price increase frenzy in feedstock, raw materials, energy, chemicals, paint and coatings, it’s a great time to develop a "price increase justification tagline" library that your sales force can utilize again and again in those client-focused, heart-to-heart price increase negotiation engagements...

What happens when a host of chemical suppliers and paint/coatings manufacturers awake from a dream only to find valuable resources splashing about in stagnant, mature markets of predicted declining unit value for their existing product offering...

Price increases are abundant and frequent these days. Many raw material suppliers and formulators to the paint and coatings industry are attempting to improve sagging margins that have been slammed by rising energy, transportation and feedstock expenses...