Don’t Screw Up Prioritizing Your Customers Like Hearst’s San Francisco Chronicle Did To Me Yesterday

I was preparing my Dino kale salad with hard-boiled egg yesterday morning, and did a quick scan of the cover story in the San Francisco Chronicle (owned by the mighty Hearst Corp.).

The headline read:

“Bakery boss”

The Wrong Way: The San Francisco Chronicle prioritized their advertiser J.C. Penney over their reader when they placed a sticker ad that covered up the front-page headline

I didn’t get it: why would the Chronicle run a headline that simply said “Bakery boss”?

It had a picture below it of two people hugging…I was still confused.

Did a local baker get promoted to “boss” and that somehow was newsorthy?

I’m a former journalist and the first rule of headlines is that it should be compelling enough to make the reader want to read on.

Then I noticed that there was a sticker on the paper and maybe that was hiding something. …

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4 Simple Tips To Help You Make Tough (“50-50”) Decisions

I wrote about the Win-Win Exercise earlier today and it reminded me that I have three other decision-making tips I use on a regular basis.

These are techniques I use when there’s a real close call (“50-50” so to speak) to make; they are often the most important decisions you’ll make.

So I’m putting all four decision-making tips here for easy access…plus I also remembered that I have this really cool illustration (below) that my nephew did for the topic!

My nephew drew this awesome image of a person having a tough time making a decision. I think it might be a combination of me and my dad!

4 Tips To Help You Make Tough Decisions

1) Decide Based On The Tougher Choice

If it’s a really tough decision on whether to take action or not take action, it is often the tougher decision that turns out to be the right one. …

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How To Get A “Win-Win” Result From A Tough “50/50” Decision

A family friend asked for career advice the other day — he was trying to make a decision between finding a new job or staying put at his current job.

He was torn — almost manic — about which way to go…so I busted out the “Win-Win” exercise inspired by Yogi/Life Coach Terry.

I like using the “Win-Win Exercise” for making tough decisions — when the choice seems to be close to 50/50 —  because you can literally get the best of both worlds…a true “win-win.”

Here we go!

The 5 Steps Of The “50-50″/”Win-Win” Exercise

This Decision-Making exercise is easy: list off the pros and cons of your two choices (e.g. my friend is deciding between leaving his job or staying at his job.). And then there's a cool twist below!

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