Fighting Friction By Russ Levanway, President In November, I attended the World of Business Ideas Conference in New York City with a group from the San Luis Obispo Chamber of Commerce. (If you’ve never been, it’s a terrific conference, great for sparking ideas.) Amid the programming, one keynote from Zoe Chance stood out to me. She… Read more »
A Tale of Two Skill Sets By Russ Levanway, President Imagine a factory that manufactures parts for buses. All day, every day, the people in this factory work hard to follow protocol, solve problems when machinery fails, and hone their productivity and skill over time. Let’s say that one employee becomes especially good at making bus… Read more »
One simple way to keep your business from slipping By Russ Levanway, President Have you ever tried to walk uphill on ice or loose gravel? Without the grip of a smooth surface, forward progress is nearly impossible, or, at best, inconsistent. In one of my favorite books, Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business, author Gino… Read more »
Am I Getting Through? By Russ Levanway, President At one year after CIO Solutions brought on TekTegrity, we have a lot to celebrate, and a lot more still to do when it comes to integrating. It’s sort of like a marriage after one year: the vows have been spoken, the cake has been cut, the honeymoon… Read more »
Interoperability: Can’t We All Just Get Along? By Russ Levanway, President I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the Samsung Galaxy Fold, the bleeding-edge new mobile phone that claims to defy categorization. If you haven’t seen it, the Galaxy Fold is a foldable smartphone with a barely discernible seam down the middle. The user literally unfolds… Read more »
By Russ Levanway, President Stoking ownership For many years, our company has had a mantra: I’ve got this. We even had water bottles for everyone made with that statement in big, bold letters printed on them. For us, this phrase conveys ownership and personal responsibility. For instance, let’s say a client calls the service desk in… Read more »
By Russ Levanway, President We recently held an annual planning meeting with the leadership team kicked things off by creating a new business plan for the year. Sound routine? It wasn’t. In light of our recent merger, we need the entire team, originating from both companies, to be on the same page. And the only way… Read more »
By Russ Levanway, President What keeps talented, smart individuals from working well together as a team? This is the question on the minds of our Culture Committee lately as we read The Culture Code, an excellent book by Daniel Coyle that claims to unlock the secrets of highly successful groups. In it, Coyle discusses the work… Read more »
By Russ Levanway, President I recently read a story in the local newspaper in which a claim was filed for wrongful termination by someone who worked at my daughters’ school. The news sure did not look good for the school: bad press, bad publicity. My initial reaction, though, wasn’t to assume the claim was true;… Read more »
By Russ Levanway, President Late last month, the FBI reported on an attempt by Russian hackers to infect hundreds of thousands of residential routers in at least 54 countries with malware. With residential routers like Linksys and NetGear primarily affected, the FBI recommended that people restart their home router to disrupt the attack. In November last… Read more »