Category: Business

The Power of Conflict: Fuel for Greatness or Sign of Dysfunction?

Great teams don't avoid conflict—they process it efficiently. The key to success isn’t eliminating conflict, but resolving it quickly and productively.

Riding the Wave: Navigating SEO and Digital Marketing in the Age of ChatGPT

As ChatGPT reshapes the digital landscape, learn how to evolve your SEO and marketing strategies to stay ahead of the curve and maintain your competitive edge.

Finding Time for Innovation

Discover practical approaches to balance daily responsibilities with innovation initiatives, ensuring your organization stays competitive and forward-thinking.

The Importance of the Enforcer and Nurturer in a Team Dynamic

Explore the crucial roles of enforcers and nurturers in team dynamics, and discover how their complementary strengths create high-performing teams.

Price's Law: Understanding the Power Law Distribution of Knowledge

Discover how Price's Law explains the distribution of knowledge and productivity in organizations, and learn how to leverage this understanding for better team management.

Visualizing Accountability

Discover practical approaches to make accountability visible and actionable within your team and organization.

Live versus Recorded Demos

Explore the advantages and challenges of both live and recorded product demos, and learn when to use each approach effectively.

Company Changes Every Time It Doubles in Size

Learn about the critical changes and challenges organizations face during different growth stages, particularly when doubling in size.

Product Organizations and the Most Important Work

Discover how high-performing product organizations balance team autonomy with organizational alignment to consistently deliver the most impactful work.

Autonomy vs Performance

Learn how to strike the right balance between giving teams autonomy while maintaining high performance standards.

6 Tips for Scaling A Business

Building an idea is hard. Turning it into a business is even harder. Scaling that business is another level of hard. This is a list of tips to help you get there.

MailChimp Christmas Gift (Minion Handbook)

MailChimp knocked it out of the park with stunning Christmas gift.

5 Principles of Life Seen Through an El Pollo Loco Birthday Lunch

El Pollo Loco customer experience that translates to life principles.

Customer Service While Traveling. Fly Classy! Thanks GoGo

What does exceptional service at 10,000ft look like?

Calculating Lead Times While Waiting at the Motor Vehicle Department

How to estimate everyday things.

Gangplank Connecting Citizens

The future we want has to be created by us. Creating the Arizona we want.

Creating The Arizona We Want

The future we want has to be created by us. Creating the Arizona we want.

Arizona Art Project - Influx AZ Comes to Chandler Arizona

AZ Art Project Influx AZ coming to Chandler, AZ.

Productivity Wednesday #6 : Share Digital Content on Social Media with Buffer

If you read a lot of digital content, you should share a lot. The problem is that you probably read in spurts. If you shared in spurts, you would probably annoy your friends. Buffer helps fix that problem.

Shirky's Sharing Model : Personal, Communal, Public and Civic

Clay Shirky enlightens us in Cognitive Surplus that, the organization of sharing has many forms and that those forms have varying output values. He gives us a way we can identify four essential points on the spectrum

Productivity Wednesday #5 : Boomerang for GMail

Sometimes when Getting Things Done, you need a little more power in your inbox than the default. Boomerang for GMail is the extra horsepower you need.

What Makes Gangplank Magical?

Gangplank is a community of creators that fuses family life, civic life, creating and earning a living into this unique blend where anything is possible. The support and tenderness offered is counter balanced by a gruff and forceful exterior making participation daunting to most.

When It Comes to Community Building, It is the Small Things

Changing a community is slow work. Paying attention to the details and working with discipline over time with patience is required to get real results.

10 Steps for Planning a Great Event

Planning events is difficult. The hardest part is starting. Here is a quick 10 step guide to get you planning for that perfect event you have been dreaming about.

Restore the Balance of Humanity. Create.

Consumption is rampant. What does is it mean to create?

Target Sucks – Expect Less, Pay More… (and other lies)

AZ Commerce Authority Full of Wrong Industry

Governer Jan Brewer announced the new AZ Commerce Authority Board today. It is no surprise that it is full of Land Developers, Sports/Tourism and Manufacturing. All industries that were leaders of the OLD economy.

Brian Cole on Economic Development Strategies

Notes from Brian Cole talking about economic development strategies at from Arizona's 96th Town Hall on Building Arizona's Future: Jobs, Innovation & Competitiveness.

Joe Kalt on Arizona Economy

Notes from Joe Kalt talking about Arizona's economy from Arizona's 96th Town Hall on Building Arizona's Future: Jobs, Innovation & Competitiveness.

Flashback on Arizona's 96th Town Hall

Random notes from the Arizona's 96th Town Hall on Building Arizona's Future: Jobs, Innovation & Competitiveness.

It's About People. Companies Saying Right Wage. Wrong Skill Set.

Why do we keep doing 1950 economic development? Capital first, then innovation and then people. Yet, companies wanting to be here say that it's lack of skilled people that keeps them out. What are we doing to invest in people? Keep and attract the best and brightest?

Four Principles of Collaborative Consumption

The basis of the 'Sharing Economy' operates on principles. How are you seeing them applied in the world around you? What can you learn from them? How are you applying them?

Great Service Requires Constant Attention

I am a fan of great service. When I see it exemplified I try to share it. For example, QuikTrip does a great job #winning. Another company that has always impressed me is Discount Tire. They always greet me right away. They fix my tires for free when repairable. They give me a free air check when my tires are low. All of this even on tires not purchased from them. WOW! They never give me problems when I need tires rotated or tires replaced under warranty that I did purchase from them.

Coworking Space vs Collaborative Workspace

When talking about Gangplank I always struggle to consider it to have anything to do with coworking. After doing some reading on collaborative learning vs. cooperative learning, I believe I can better articulate the difference between collaborative workspaces and coworking spaces.

Skysong: Helping Cement Phoenix as the Place for Mediocre People

The Greater Phoenix Economic Council released a report touting that Skysong actually is exceeding expectations and has been underestimated. Citing a $113 million impact which is largely calculated using salaries of people that have worked there over the last five years.

Public Universities Get a Free Pass

The University of Phoenix announced a 42% decline in enrollment with forecasts that next quarter will see another significant dip. The number one reason cited is a change in rules affecting for-profit-schools that restricts paying admission counselors based on how many students they enroll.

Opening Lines From Great Minds

It is no secret, I love books. One of my favorite things to read is autobiographies. I enjoy them because I love to hear the authors reflect back on how they got started. A glimpse of what made them who they became.

Microsoft Kinect Exceeding Expectations. Adopted More Quickly Than iPad.

I see a lot of new technology. Not very often am I impressed. Microsoft has a winner on their hands with Kinect. I completely ignored it at launch. Gangplank even had Kinect setup at the Chandler Block Party with tons of kids playing it. It looked stupid to me. The Wii had already won my heart.