Recent Articles from Pat Wiesner
On management: Simplify?
As I get older, I seem to want to make things simpler. I went to a seminar recently that lasted three days; it would have fit better into one. Some books I have read would have been better as pamphlets. When I was in Florida I saw a kid about 10 years old on the […]
On management: In a changing world, three rules for sales success
“You will never find a finer company than this,” the salesman on the other end of the line said. “Not only are we really nice people, we’ll get your car to Florida in just five days, and save you a lot of money to boot. “Why don’t you let me shoot you a copy of […]
On management: A letter to a grandchild having trouble in school
I hope you will read this. It is sent with love and belief in you, but I wouldn’t blame you if you tossed it because I should have tried to make a better connection with you long ago. The next couple of paragraphs are about my high school and college days, and we share some […]
On management: 50 years of selling
My first sales job was in 1958, 52 years ago. I was educated as an engineer (a physicist really), and I thought that the title of “Sales Engineer” was cool. I remember my first day selling industrial plastic. I was sent out with Bernie because Bernie knew everything about sales and sold more of our […]
On management: Here come the millenials
Millennials are people who came of age around and just before the year 2000. That would put them somewhere in their teens to mid-20s. That would make them our up-and-comers. These are the ones who will someday be the managers in our companies. I was told by someone familiar with the matter (as they say […]
On management: When a choice isn’t really a choice
Dwight Eisenhower was the first person I can remember voting for. It was in 1958, and I was 21. I didn’t even know he was the Republican nominee; I voted for him because of his war record. He was a real war hero for every young person in the country and his Democratic opponent, Adlai […]
On management: One thing the feds do best
We have just completed three weeks of driving, camping and even renting a house for a week at Flathead Lake in Montana. In the process we traipsed all over three national parks: Teton, Yellowstone and Glacier. The overwhelming, No. 1 impression is how well they are run, from the roads you drive, to the management […]
On management: The real stimulus
Wow, those oil companies sure handle a lot of money and end up with a ton of profit! The top 10 oil companies account for about $1 trillion ($1,000,000,000,000) of sales and more than $100 billion ($100,000,000,000) in profit. Last year, Exxon Mobil had revenues of $300-plus billion, and even poor old beat-up BP had […]
On management: What’s it like to work for you?
Once somebody asked me to help him figure out what his people thought about his management style. It caused us to come up with a list of things we thought were important. You could be running anything from one person to an entire large company. So here are some of my favorite items from the […]
On management: small crisis puts character on display
It started as a nightmare. After being on the road for two weeks in a motor home on the way to this year’s Kentucky Derby, I scraped the back end of my rig along part of an auto-hauler trailer in a crowded Cracker Barrel parking lot. I had been slowly following the signs to “RV […]
On management: How to get into the Final Four of business
Even a part-time basketball fan like me had to get excited by the prospects for the big game last month between Duke and Butler. Part of the excitement had to grow out of the drama created by the entire series of events leading up to the “Final Two.” A truly David vs. Goliath struggle. Butler […]
On management: “I want to be a lion!”
Only one hour after we had landed at the little airport just outside of the game park in South Africa it was getting dark, and we were in an open Land Rover headed for the jungle. All this happened about 15 years ago, but I always remember it like it was yesterday because it was […]