In my search for transformational growth in the financial services industry, I am constantly on the lookout for innovative activities. The majority of my keynote speeches still revolve around some type of branch transformation. And one of the biggest elements of the transformation needed in the branch is the transformation of the people working there. […]
Tag Archives: grounded
Using a Storm to Improve Success
When the family needs beach time and an infusion of saltwater living, we head to Alligator Point in Northwest Florida. It’s just over a two hour drive away and has miles of beach access on the Gulf of Mexico. On one particular trip, we rented a house that was just 20 paces from the water. […]
You Got to Know When to Fold Em …
It is always a crapshoot answering your mobile phone from a number that you don’t recognize. In one particular instance, what I thought was a phone call from a recently signed client, turned out to be a cold call from an organization that had reached out to me via LinkedIn previously. Their LinkedIn message had […]
The Best $250 I Ever Spent – On Creating a Memorable Experience
I recently attended the 2017 Payments Conference put on by the National Automated Clearing House Association (NACHA). This is a gathering of all of the stakeholders in the payments biz and generally is a great big meet and greet for those of us who have spent decades in payments. One of the highlights of this […]
Paying it Backward
I was chatting with a good friend and pro speaker, Chris Petersen, and she shared a cool story. Seems she was in line at a Chic-fil-A to grab a quick bite on the road, and once she got up to the window, the server told her that her meal had been paid for by the […]
Cocky Goliaths Can Fall Hard
The year was 2004. Two software giants were duking it out for supremacy in the microcomputer market. Well, that’s not really true. They were not equally gigantic, at least in relative terms. The giant was Microsoft and in 2004, it had a revenue of $36 billion. Its “competitor” was Apple and in 2004, it had […]
If it Walks Like a Duck and Talks Like a Duck
I was on the Southern Methodist University campus the other day. I am part of the Southwest Graduate Banking School facility and am teaching a three day elective on Branch Transformation to second and third year students. SMU is a beautiful campus. Not only do we receive outstanding resources to use in the classroom, we […]
Never Too Old
The Peterson clan recently celebrated our bi-annual family reunion in Orlando, Florida. We rented a nine bedroom house in the ChampionsGate complex near Disney. Although I have lost a brother and sister in the past three years, my parents, my remaining two siblings, and all the downstream spouses and kids gathered for three days to […]
Shrinking a Giant
I was quite interested in a recent article by Dan Gallagher in the Wall Street Journal. The article outlines how companies that had acquired business in an effort to achieve scale are now shedding those businesses to focus on core competencies. In the story, Gallagher talks about software giants divesting of businesses that they had spent […]
Learning to Swim
On Memorial Day, my son and his family came over for the afternoon. It was a beautiful day, very low humidity for South Georgia and we had a full grill of various protein options planned along with swimming in the pool. My 6 year-old grandson Liam is a fish and is very comfortable in the […]