There is significant confusion in the business world between Operational Excellence and a Low-Price Strategy. Based on our years of experience designing, developing, and implementing simulation-centric business acumen learning journeys, I want to share some insights and ideas about the differences and how these differences can be used for better strategic execution and decision-making. The Confusion Part of the confusion is simply a matter of semantics and wording. In the game-changing book, “The Discipline of Market Leaders (Tracey & Wiersema),” the authors propose there are only 3 ..read more

Every quarter, Advantexe’s business acumen modeling team meets to discuss the core interest and inflation rate in our business acumen simulations. “I guess we better make the adjustment and raise them again,” said our top modeler very matter-of-factly. So, beginning this week, the core interest rate in our core (non-customized) business simulations will go to 5.25% and the core inflation rate will go to 3.5%. As our participants run their simulated companies, that means foundational Cost of Goods Sold (COGS), raw materials, and labor will continue to rise. The goal of our business acumen simu ..read more

I was scrolling through LinkedIn waiting for my flight to take off when I saw a posting from @TomBoyer. Tom is one of those rare individuals you meet in your life that you never forget. His genuine and authentic leadership style is something I have tried to emulate and more importantly, is something I use as an example of what good looks like when explaining the difference between good and great. Some background… I first met Tom when he was the General Manager of the Alpharetta Marriott in 2011. Back then, I would travel there at least once a month and usually stay for a week. Every morning ..read more

It is a familiar story around the world every day as business leaders grapple with finding the tools they need to lead effectively so they, their teams, and their companies can achieve their goals and objectives. In the post-COVID reality of the remote workforce where still more than 50% of the workforce works remotely, the rules have changed, and it is more challenging for leaders to find the right approaches and tools to get their direct and indirect reports to “own it.” By own it, I am referring to a mentality or attitude where individuals take full responsibility for their actions, decisi ..read more

Every 90 days, the executive leadership team of every publicly traded company delivers an earnings call to shareholders and analysts to review the previous quarters’ business results and to discuss and share future performance through forecasts and general guidance. These earnings calls are very important and can significantly influence the analysts and more importantly, the employees of the company. The best leadership teams can uniquely combine humility, transparency, and data into a story that gives direction and convinces analysts to want to buy more stock in the company, hold their stock ..read more

As the business world continues to evolve, and as access to more information becomes overwhelming to many employees, it is more important to business decision-making that all employees have the skills and tools they can get to absorb and deal with the “hot business topics” of the day. As part of our mission, the Advantexe team continues to research this concept and think about different solutions to offer our clients including the idea of a portfolio of “hot topic business simulations” on a subscription basis which would continue to build the business acumen skills of our client in a unique ..read more

Yesterday, I had the privilege of facilitating an innovative new digital business simulation called, “The Escape Room Simulation” and it was a blast. Our client was looking for a new and fun way to get people to understand a significant new process and they asked us to develop a customized escape room simulation. An escape room simulation is a type of immersive adventure game where participants are "locked" in a themed room and must solve a series of puzzles, riddles, and challenges within a set time limit to "escape" from the room. These simulations typically require teamwork, critical think ..read more

One of Advantexe’s great existing clients who works with us on three different developmental programs (two in Business Acumen and one in Business Leadership) emailed asking about a new simulation we just released in our most recent simulation catalog. “What can you tell me about this new Building Trust simulation? I love the idea of some sort of exercise that helps our leaders understand how to build trust by practicing, not just having some speaker talk at them for a couple of hours.” I shared the highlights of the three immersive, interactive scenarios that provide learners with the opportu ..read more

Being “ghosted” by a customer, colleague, supplier, or anyone else in your business ecosystem that have an established relationship with can be very unsettling. Being ghosted refers to the sudden and unexplained cessation of any and all communications without any idea why. In most cases, you have reached out with good intent, and haven’t done anything “wrong,” but nothing. Pure “radio silence.” In a typical non-sales business environment (being ghosted in sales is another blog for another day), being ghosted can be awkward, confusing, and very frustrating. Based on some recent discussions com ..read more

Last week I shared some insights on the Business Acumen Skills that Execute Business Development. The impetus for the blog was several requests from clients to share insights on what is business development in 2024 and beyond and what the “average employee” needs to know about it to both drive it and support it. As we have seen, many public and private organizations have determined that one of the most important ways to grow and scale is through “Business Development” which means mergers, acquisitions, licensing, investments, options-to-buy, and several other investment vehicles. We have seen ..read more