Business in Focus: Nehemiah Manufacturing Company

A closer look at companies executing leadership excellence . Before the pandemic, 38% of manufacturers had trouble finding candidates with the right skills, and today that number is 54%, according to a report by The Workforce Institute at UKG thinktank. Yet, despite this labor crisis, Cincinnati-based Nehemiah Manufacturing has more applicants than it can handle, even as it navigates a pandemic-driven business boon. (more…)

Message From Our Founder

Welcome to the seventy-first issue of CEE News! . Following the murder of George Floyd last May, a tragedy that touched off months of protests and civil unrest, a credit union CEO near Minneapolis found himself in a place similar to thousands of corporate leaders. He knew he wanted to reach out to employees in a personal, companywide email letting everyone know he took this seriously and that the credit union was looking at its own diversity practices to determine what additional measures could be taken. But as he sat down to write, he recalls, “there was a level of anxiety for me ...

Sticky Solutions

Sticky solutions to your everyday business challenges   Question: During the pandemic, we hired nearly 30 new team members, most of whom never worked in our office. As we develop our return-to-work plans, I’ve been tasked to ensure those new team members acclimate to the organization regardless of whether they’ll work full time from the office or in a hybrid capacity. What advice can you give me for re-onboarding employees who started remotely? (more…)

Business in Focus: Elastic

A closer look at companies executing leadership excellence . As humans, we are insatiably curious. Prior to the inception of the Internet and the rise of the search engine, we had a limited array of solutions when a question arose. But, as the Internet grew, organizing, sorting, securing and mining vast amounts of data quickly became a challenge. That’s the problem Elastic Founder and CEO Shay Banon found when he started building a search engine for his wife’s recipes. While she attended cooking school at Le Cordon Bleu, Banon worked from their flat in London to building a search ...

Message From Our Founder

Welcome to the seventieth issue of CEE News! Last Thursday, I met a girlfriend for a glass of wine at a beautiful restaurant in San Diego during Happy Hour. After spending more than twelve months in a state of suspended animation—limiting my social interactions to fewer than a dozen people—I felt free. Since March of 2020, my husband and I have limited our gatherings to a small cohort of family and friends. We ran our companies from our home offices and dedicated ourselves to making sure that our teams and clients were as safe, sound, and sane as possible through a year+ of ...

Sticky Solutions

Sticky solutions to your everyday business challenges   Question: I recently started a new position as Director of Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) at a municipal utilities company with over 3,000 employees. Before I was hired, the company offered bias training for managers and supported employee resource groups. Survey feedback showed that these efforts were “somewhat helpful”, but the company is still far from closing its gaps in D&I, so it has made addressing D&I a priority for the upcoming fiscal year. Can you recommend ways to adopt a more systemic approach to ...

Business in Focus: Tuft & Needle

A closer look at companies executing leadership excellence . In 2012, Silicon Valley software engineer JT Marino stumbled across a problem—buying a mattress totally sucked. Between confusing buzzwords, pushy salespeople, and backwards policies, JT knew there was an opportunity to take an archaic industry and flip it upside down. Enter Daehee Park, his long time friend and colleague. They launched a simple test site to see if anyone out there would actually be interested in buying a mattress online. Within just 15 minutes, Bingo! They had their first buyer. After returning the money, ...

Message From Our Founder

Welcome to the sixty-ninth issue of CEE News!   If the turmoil of 2020 has prompted your leadership team to reconsider people priorities such as employee well-being, resilience, or purpose, then you’re in good company. Your employees are reconsidering you, too. An August 2020 study by McKinsey found that nearly 70% of U.S.-based employees said that the Covid-19 pandemic has caused them to reflect on their purpose in life. Almost half said that they are reconsidering the kind of work they do because of the pandemic. Millennials – the largest generation in the U.S. labor force – ...
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