Building Teams vs Team Building

So you’ve got yourself an exciting business with several employees and lots of work to do. But who is supposed to do what? Building teams is a very specific process and the thing to recognize when crafting a team is that a key factor is finding the best position for everyone on your team. In […]

Business Advisory Boards (BABs) (Part 3 of 3)

Chesapeake Think Tank has a unique approach to its Private Advisory Boards (BABs).  We have discovered that group size is one of the secret ingredients to success. The more people in a room, the more ideas start bouncing and the gears start churning –exponentially. Having sixteen people in a room who are engaged AND when […]

Advisory Boards vs Business Advisory Boards Part 1

Advisory Boards, Business Advisory Boards, Peer Advisory Boards…we’ve heard them all but have you ever wondered what the difference between them actually is? We’re here to break that down for you in a three-part series. Typically, a “standard” Advisory Board is when a business owner decides they need an outside perspective and expertise that they […]

Productive Conflict

Understand that our society trains us to enter conflict with a “Win-Lose” mindset. Conflict is inherently competitive in this methodology, and someone stands to win, while someone else must therefore lose. But what happens if we enter a conflict situation with a “win-win” approach? With “win-win”, you end up with both (or all) parties saying  […]

How to Achieve your New Year’s Resolutions

As arbitrary as it is, starting a new year is a fresh start and a good psychological tool for motivating yourself to set new goals, both personally and professionally. It not only serves to measure how you’d like to grow, but to measure your current progress. The feeling that January 1st brings can improve optimism […]

Vision, Alignment, Execution

It is often difficult for business owners to effectively track how their employees’ skills match up with their company’s needs. This is generally due to lacking an overarching understanding of the business or organization’s model and state of developmental maturity. When provided with this overarching model, the owner can quickly determine both what skills are […]

The Elevator Pitch

The concept of the elevator pitch is everywhere. Business gurus seem unanimous in calling for businesspeople to have a pithy introduction at the ready for any occasion. Why the intense scrutiny on how we introduce ourselves?   The idea is pretty simple. We’ve all been at a networking event where the participants are asked to […]