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Mike Cleland is a management consultant specializing in the staffing industry. With 18 years experience, he has a proven track record of helping staffing companies achieve the next level of performance.
Category Archives: Process
Why the Status Quo Isn’t Good Enough
If you don’t like change, you will like irrelevance even less. General Erick Shinseki An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage. Jack Welch The majority of people hate change. Change … Continue reading
Relationships Still Rule, But…..
Back in the early 90s when I entered this business, I was exposed to a simple yet accurate description of the staffing industry by Al Dubuc of Oz Enterprises- “People selling people to people”. The crux of that definition was … Continue reading
The End of Management
A couple weeks ago I was browsing through the weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal and stumbled on an article titled “The End of Management”. Contrary to what it suggests, the point of the article is not … Continue reading
Budgeting Behavior
Staffing is a rapidly changing, people driven business, so I have always struggled with the role of the budget in managing the day-to-day operations over the course of an entire year. While I know budgets are necessary, they can also … Continue reading
The Power of Habit
I was just reading a book called the Power or Habit by Jack Hodge. The primary narrative of the book is that we, more than anything else, are defined by what we do, and close to 90% of what we … Continue reading
Jack’s Big Aha!
It’s never a bad idea to look at strategic principles through the lens of proven business leaders such as Jack Welch. Jack started at GE as a chemical engineer in 1960 and by 1980 he was promoted to CEO where … Continue reading
What Drives Your Sales Culture?
In the last blog article, I discussed how the Global Workforce Study on workforce culture reported the highest level of employee dissatisfaction in the study’s 23 year history. Employee dissatisfaction can be especially damaging to a company’s sales culture, threatening … Continue reading
The BP Spill: A Consequence of Bad Strategy
“A company can’t prioritize everything, and while BP was prioritizing PR and acquisitions, it wasn’t prioritizing operations.” Holman Jenkins, WSJ A preventable catastrophe is unfolding along our Gulf shores and much of the region is going to suffer for years. … Continue reading
Beware the Cassandra Complex
Cassandra was a princess of Troy, who had the gift of prophesy, but who could not persuade anyone because was cursed with a severe credibility gap. Can you imagine her frustration? She knows she is right, but lacks the credibility … Continue reading
Are You Selling to the Right Accounts?
An effective sales strategy starts with well defined segmentation of your current and target accounts. However, many companies struggle with defining the right criteria to build an effective account pipeline, which then significantly reduces the productivity of their entire sales … Continue reading