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At the peak of their expansion, Starbucks was opening 7 new stores every day and adding 15,000 employees every week. How did a small coffee shop in Seattle end up with over 17,000 stores and revenues of more than $10 billion, selling $4 coffee in a fancy cup? How did Starbucks build such an incredible […]

Have you benefited from all the good advice you’ve received over the years? Have you experienced times when you got great advice and it didn’t work? Don’t we all want good advice from whoever can give it? There are times when even the best advice doesn’t pay off.

To be a successful executive you must know how to knock down walls. I don’t mean the walls of brick and steel that hold up buildings; I mean the bureaucratic barriers that hold up communication. In many companies, communication flows through narrow channels, usually from the top down — chimneys of power, they’re called.

There are songs about it (think “One” by U2), there are stores named after it (think Pier 1 Imports), and every sports team on the planet says it is number one after an exciting victory. It’s good to be number one. Now think about “two.” There are few songs about number two, fewer stores, and […]