Latest News From Mark Faust

Mark Faust outlines a simple formula to improve profitability and create more value for you and the customer.

Mark Faust shares the biggest sectors where most companies could improve.

Personal health can mirror business health. Here are seven characteristics to measure and monitor.

Mark Faust advises to leave your work environment and find a fresh view on how to enable your own turnaround mindset.

What would you do if employees left and took your customer base with them? Take your pick of 25 strategies to avoid it.

Mark Faust discusses strategies business owners can use to find hidden profits and growth potential.

How could you symbolically and enthusiastically celebrate your team’s successes?

Begin using this tool every six months, and watch your team gain alignment and focus.  

Realize 6, 7 or even 8 figures of savings without reducing your most valuable resource—your people.

I’ve reformulated Porter’s list and labeled the forces as “pressures.” Along with these pressures that most businesses face, there are trends to consider.

Inside the advisory growth process: Quarterly growth strategy dialogues grow both your business and your leadership

How it can turn around a company and accelerate innovation

You can do a handful of things to greatly improve your odds of “getting all you can out of all you’ve got.” 

The process involves your team identifying and agreeing on two areas: your strongest points of defensible competitive advantage and your competition’s weakest points of vulnerability.

It sounds so basic, yet most companies have significant gaps in sharing and clarifying their missions.

Build innovation into your plans as a high priority, and your team will make innovation a priority.

Solve problems by finding inspiration outside the norm

Think back to a time when your back was against the wall. To others, it may have looked like all hope was lost. Many would have given up, but you didn’t. You pressed on, and your persistence was paid off with success.

The crisis and pain of procrastination are gifts. Think of them as an alarm bell. When it sounds, you know you need to engage in a relationship that will allow you to focus on what you enjoy most and are best at doing.

In dozens of turnarounds, I have participated firsthand in facilitating negotiations, strategic thinking, innovation and performance improvement dialogues with vendors.

Here are top tips on setting strategic goals and asking tactical innovation planning questions.

Nothing grows a company like growing its top leader.    

Talent is rarer than ever. Attracting it and keeping it is your key to success. Culture is king. Go see your people, and listen one-on-one.

Here are five tips that can help build more productive workdays

If you’re procrastinating, delegate it. If you don’t like it, delegate it. If it’s not your talent, delegate it.

Prepare your business for new heights of success

When Tom Brady was asked about being the Super Bowl LV MVP, and about the odds he had to overcome to get to the season’s final game and win... Did Tom talk about Tom? 

Two stories illustrate the value of “the old ways” of selling.

From Mark Faust: I’ve found there are many keys to help make such a group effective. Here are a few ideas and qualifiers to use in creating, running or qualifying a group. 

The practice is simple. Grab your drink of choice. Sit down, relax, read the questions, and just think for three to five minutes about ideas relating to each question.

The Quiet Hour can focus your strategy in powerful ways

Mark Faust shares six questions to guide an alignment dialogue and help you position your team like fighter jets in formation.

Mark Faust shares: "I call it innovation Jujitsu, it is the momentum of some amount of fear, grief and/or external uncertainty being redirected toward a vision of hope and change."

There are a common set of practices we can all take, but the most important first step is what I’ve called the Turnaround Mindset.

If you want to persuade people, then follow the Four Rs of Persuasion, and build a reputation.

Manage toward the possible not the probable.

There are three legs to the stool of running every organization.

You are in a battle for the best people in the marketplace. To get them you need to be the best workplace. To be a great place to work you need a compelling culture.

When a true turnaround mindset is introduced, hope builds.

Teams of two can focus on achieving objectives such as innovating better ways to see more customers or uncovering improvement areas in a specific part of the company. 

Yes, folks, you can trust this ol’ Tennessee woodsman’s wisdom. Simple little things like this can make a difference in just 15 minutes a week.

Regardless of if you have cutting-edge technologies and intellectual property or actual commodities in a mature market, this is an excellent strategy dialogue.

“You don’t want conversations focused too much on the obvious challenging times but more on customers’ vision, direction and goals and how you might work to get there.”

“Constraints beget greater innovation—not just because innovation is good but because it is a requirement for survival.”

The difference between taking a few shots at a half dozen rabbits on the run versus zeroing your sights on a giant buck standing in a holler is an apt metaphor for transforming a business and achieving marketing and selling effectiveness.