Once you have established specific goals, ongoing coaching is essential to developing your employees.  Enterprise [the car rental company] uses a coaching method known as SOS, which stands for "show, observe, and shape."  

• Show employees how to perform a task while explaining the steps required to complete it.
• Observe employees as they perform the task.
• Shape performance by providing feedback, additional resources, or opportunities to improve their skills.

-Kirk Kazanjian, Driving Loyalty

Continuous improvement, or CI in shorthand, is a management approach that gained currency in the 1980s and 1990s.  With a CI culture, nobody in the organization ever thinks, "OK, now that we've achieved this year's cost targets, let's just run things steadily for a bit, no more changes."  A CI culture implies there's always a next idea or a next step, however small.  And it says that if you're not moving a little bit further forward in some way, there's a danger you'll start slipping back - if not in absolute terms, then relative to your competitors.  You have to be paranoid about complacency.  

And with a CI culture, nobody ever thinks, "OK, there's more to do, but I'll wait a few months and assemble a good, long, meaty to-do list, then I'll really go for it, I'll make a sprint for the tape."  A CI culture says do even a little bit today, don't wait for a major event, a big process - if you do, there's a risk it won't happen, it could become too monumental and hard to handle.

- Andrew Wileman, Driving Down Cost

The definition of leadership is so much more than the words used in the dictionary.  There are so many facets to the meaning of the word.  Leaders are usually self-made and successful through hard work and making tough decisions.  The good news is leadership is not about a person's title on a business card.  Instead, it's about taking action and achieving goals, not about position.  So if we believe that leadership begins and ends with action, then all of us have certainly taken some positive form of action in our lives; therefore, we are all leaders.  I feel all to often people misinterpret their own ability to lead. To be a leader you don't necessarily have to have followers.  You just have to individually take action on achieving your own personal goals. Are you making a real difference in your world by your leadership, and what can you do to challenge yourself? 

Simply do one major thing from your to-do list before you do anything else each day.  That means before you check email or phone messages, before you do the social rounds at work or stop by the water cooler.  Do not pass Go, do not collect $200, do not start playing Monopoly or Angry Birds.   Do not do anything else until you've moved ahead a major project or goal in your life.

- Craig Ballantyne, Early to Rise

It seems that some businesses have over-complicated delivering good, solid customer service.  The focus is often on technical processes rather than a genuine, natural service flow.  For example, a service person will think, "I have to do this first, this second, third...etc."  The result of that is an impersonal disconnect with the the customer who is trying to do business with that company.  We have all been on the receiving end of the person behind the desk or at the checkout counter who is so lost in their "processes" that greeting the customer, helping them, or taking their money will only happen when they have finished their paperwork, computer transaction, conversation, and so on.  A big miss.