Anastasia Ksenofontova shares an article on the competition between sales and production teams and how consulting partners can combine the competencies of both departments. Salespeople sell what they know rather than what the clients need. They use personal connections rather than industrial or functional competencies to close the deals. Salespeople do not fully understand the products they are selling. On the other hand, production or service delivery cannot provide what the salespeople have promised. Technicians do not know how to…

Guillermo Herbozo shares an evergreen post on improving team effectiveness.  In our quest to improve team effectiveness in a sustainable way, we have come to a seemingly obvious conclusion. There is no one stand-alone intervention for making change sustainable. Improving team performance requires a combination of efforts and interventions, as discussed on the post Coaching is critical but is not enough. What has also become clear to us is that if a team wants to obtain and sustain improvement they…

Stephen Wunker shares an article that explores team alignment and employee management as the new remote and hybrid work options become an expected norm in the business world.  With remote and hybrid work options apparently here to stay, how are companies balancing their employees’ desires for greater autonomy with the need to maintain cohesion and alignment? A growing number are turning to OKR software, a tool for managing the increasingly popular ‘Objectives and Key Results’ goal-setting framework. It’s no coincidence,…

Amit Bhambi shares a timeless post and three key takeaways for a successful and strategic change management process. Strategic Change Management is understanding where we are making change then executing. When picking a new restaurant to try out with friends, you have to take some things into consideration to choose the right place. You may want to understand who is coming, where are the coming from, what time we are meeting and what kind of food everyone wants to eat….

In this post, Jessica Lackey identifies the five costs of misalignment and what you can do about it.  It can be easy to stay super busy by taking action in our lives and businesses. #productivity #hustleculture But if the actions we are taking are not aligned to our deepest blueprint, our inner knowing, then we aren’t truly operating in our highest gifts that will transform our revenue and results. We might be treading water, or “wasting time”, instead of being…

  Xavier Lederer shares a purposeful post that offers practical steps that can be taken to maximize the efficacy of meetings when the goal is executing the priorities of a strategy. Many of us hate meetings. Many regular meetings are boring and ineffective indeed. They don’t have the right agenda (or no agenda at all), are not well facilitated, and don’t accomplish much. Yet the right meetings lead to faster and better decision-making, increase accountability throughout the organization, and improve…

  In this post, Dan Markovitz identifies the weak spots in  productivity hacks and explains why they don’t work. Leaders in organizations are always seeking to improve employee productivity (including their own). All too often, that quest goes no further than time management training provided by the HR department. Those classes cover the pros and cons of Inbox Zero, the Pomodoro technique, the Eisenhower matrix, Getting Things Done, and countless other approaches that tantalize us with visions of the promised…

  In this podcast,Tineke Keesmaat interviews Dr. Elsbeth Johnson who shares her ground-breaking research on how leaders and managers can achieve successful strategic change in their organizations.  Big, strategic change efforts often fail. Virtually all of them are harder than they need to be. Why is this and what can leaders do to make change stick?  Leaders must learn to step up in the early stages of an organizational change, and then step back in its later stages. This combination…

Umbrex is pleased to welcome Yevgeniy Rikhterman.  Yevgeniy Rikhterman spent three years as the Director of Strategy at Herff Jones, a PE owned CPG company. Yevgeniy has experience in creating strategic plans, as well as an evergreen strategic planning processes. Yevgeniy led the strategic planned that helped to maximize the value of Herff Jones during a critical PE transaction. He also led the corporate development, and M&A aspect, and as such has specific experiences that is applicable to mid-size companies…