Mike Figliuolo

Having business acumen means understanding how your business operates. If you are interested in moving up in an organization, you need to understand what your organization's competitive advantage is, what drives performance, and how you compete against other organizations. This knowledge helps you exercise good judgment when making business decisions. In this course, leadership expert Mike Figliuolo explains the most common business topics and terms you need to be familiar with—business models,… Show more

Having business acumen means understanding how your business operates. If you are interested in moving up in an organization, you need to understand what your organization's competitive advantage is, what drives performance, and how you compete against other organizations. This knowledge helps you exercise good judgment when making business decisions. In this course, leadership expert Mike Figliuolo explains the most common business topics and terms you need to be familiar with—business models, financials, strategy, sales and marketing, R&D, P&L, EBITDA, and other key concepts. He leads you through a series of questions that will help you understand your business better, such as:

What business are you in?
What's your market and who is your competition?
What problem does your business solve?
How are your products and services created?
What are your pricing and growth strategies?
How do you measure performance?

With the answers in hand, you can be assured your have the knowledge to make the best decisions for your business.
Show less

The Elegant Pitch: Create a Compelling Recommendation, Build Broad Support, and Get it Approved

"We're sorry but your recommendation wasn't approved."

We've all heard those words; it's a sentence that swallows your hopes and crushes your confidence.

Getting ideas or projects approved and securing the resources needed to implement them is one of the greatest challenges business leaders face. With multiple stakeholders, constrained budgets, and competing agendas, it's… Show more

The Elegant Pitch: Create a Compelling Recommendation, Build Broad Support, and Get it Approved

"We're sorry but your recommendation wasn't approved."

We've all heard those words; it's a sentence that swallows your hopes and crushes your confidence.

Getting ideas or projects approved and securing the resources needed to implement them is one of the greatest challenges business leaders face. With multiple stakeholders, constrained budgets, and competing agendas, it's difficult to cut through the clutter and garner the required support.

The Elegant Pitch provides a simple, proven process to go from idea to approval more quickly and effectively than ever before. This is the same method used by elite strategy consulting firms such as McKinsey & Co. and Bain Consulting. But you don't have to be a high-priced consultant to master a process that promises:

Clearer and more compelling recommendations and ideas.
Shorter and crisper communications.
Greater efficiency.
Shorter and fewer meetings.
More efficient decision-making processes.
A higher likelihood of getting your recommendations approved.

Do less work, hold fewer and shorter meetings, and get ideas approved on the first pass? Sign me up!

By using the methods in The Elegant Pitch, you can get to "yes" more quickly and drive the results that set you apart from the crowd. Show less

Pitching a big idea can be a daunting prospect if you're unsure where to start. Gathering data and presenting facts isn't always sufficient. This course helps you turn the ideas in your head into clear and compelling proposals.

The Structured Thought and Communication method is designed to help you clearly articulate the value of your big idea and align it with the needs of stakeholders. While going through the method, you'll get to see how to build an architecture for your idea, create… Show more

Pitching a big idea can be a daunting prospect if you're unsure where to start. Gathering data and presenting facts isn't always sufficient. This course helps you turn the ideas in your head into clear and compelling proposals.

The Structured Thought and Communication method is designed to help you clearly articulate the value of your big idea and align it with the needs of stakeholders. While going through the method, you'll get to see how to build an architecture for your idea, create a story that highlights the benefits of your idea, and identify the data that helps prove the value of your idea.

By the end of this course, you'll be ready to define, test, and communicate your idea to get the support and buy-in you seek. This course is based on the highly successful Structured Thought and Communication instructor-led training and the book, The Elegant Pitch: Create a Compelling Recommendation, Build Broad Support, and Get it Approved. Show less

Critical thinking is the ability to think reflectively and independently in order to make thoughtful decisions. By focusing on root-cause issues, critical thinking helps you avoid future problems that can result from your actions. In this course, leadership trainer and expert Mike Figliuolo outlines a series of techniques to help you develop your critical thinking skills. He reveals how to define the problem you're trying to solve and then provides a number of critical thinking tools, such as… Show more

Critical thinking is the ability to think reflectively and independently in order to make thoughtful decisions. By focusing on root-cause issues, critical thinking helps you avoid future problems that can result from your actions. In this course, leadership trainer and expert Mike Figliuolo outlines a series of techniques to help you develop your critical thinking skills. He reveals how to define the problem you're trying to solve and then provides a number of critical thinking tools, such as blowing up the business, asking the 5 whys, asking the 7 so whats, using the 80/20 rule, and more. He also provides guidance on how to develop this skill across your whole team.
Topics include:
- Breaking big problems into small ones
- Defining the problem statement
- Asking focusing questions
- Finding root causes
- Using critical thinking tools
- Teaching others to think critically Show less

Employee goals should be driven by the organization's needs—whether it's to cut costs, drive revenue, or build skills—and keep employees motivated to succeed. Mike Figliuolo, managing director of thoughtLEADERS and former McKinsey consultant, helps you set employee goals that are SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. Using the SMART framework, he shows you how to develop goals that are achievable and appropriate to your employees' roles.

Along with providing… Show more

Employee goals should be driven by the organization's needs—whether it's to cut costs, drive revenue, or build skills—and keep employees motivated to succeed. Mike Figliuolo, managing director of thoughtLEADERS and former McKinsey consultant, helps you set employee goals that are SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. Using the SMART framework, he shows you how to develop goals that are achievable and appropriate to your employees' roles.

Along with providing guidance on how to link individual employee goals to organizational strategy, Mike walks you through the different types of goals, including bottom-up, zero-based, commit, and stretch goals. He also helps you use goals to change behaviors, build new skills among employees, and make goals actionable by using incentives and tying them to specific activities. He concludes with a comprehensive plan for setting and implementing goals, and some tips on dealing with challenges such as conflicting goals. Show less

Making executive decisions requires making tough choices. The decision to lay people off, halt major projects, or to take your company global all come with a significant amount of risk—both business risk and professional risk. This course explains the difference between executive decision making and day-to-day decision making and shows how to equip yourself so you can make high-quality decisions with far-reaching positive impact.

Learn how to find the data and tools to support your… Show more

Making executive decisions requires making tough choices. The decision to lay people off, halt major projects, or to take your company global all come with a significant amount of risk—both business risk and professional risk. This course explains the difference between executive decision making and day-to-day decision making and shows how to equip yourself so you can make high-quality decisions with far-reaching positive impact.

Learn how to find the data and tools to support your decision, make the call, communicate decisions effectively, and lead your organization through the change. The course also addresses common problems that arise from these high-profile decisions: cultural differences, quality of information, trust, and accountability, to name a few.

Topics include:
- Assessing risks
- Making hard choices
- Getting the right data
- Communicating effectively
- Making the call
- Declaring success
- Dealing with problems Show less

Learn negotiation skills to help you get what you want while also building better relationships with coworkers, bosses, business partners, and suppliers. In this course, leadership consultant and trainer Mike Figliuolo shares simple yet effective negotiating skills and tools. He covers the four major phases of the negotiating cycle and explains how to assess your situation, gather data, negotiate a deal, and then assess and learn from your experience. He also explains common negotiating… Show more

Learn negotiation skills to help you get what you want while also building better relationships with coworkers, bosses, business partners, and suppliers. In this course, leadership consultant and trainer Mike Figliuolo shares simple yet effective negotiating skills and tools. He covers the four major phases of the negotiating cycle and explains how to assess your situation, gather data, negotiate a deal, and then assess and learn from your experience. He also explains common negotiating pitfalls and what you can do to avoid them. Show less

Looking to build a business or expand one you're already running? You'll need to build a business plan before you do. Experienced entrepreneur and consultant Mike Figliuolo walks through the process of defining your business, researching the market, and determining your product. Once you've figured out what your product or service will be, Mike provides guidance for thinking through your sales strategy, day-to-day operations, staffing, and financial forecasting. A sample business plan is… Show more

Looking to build a business or expand one you're already running? You'll need to build a business plan before you do. Experienced entrepreneur and consultant Mike Figliuolo walks through the process of defining your business, researching the market, and determining your product. Once you've figured out what your product or service will be, Mike provides guidance for thinking through your sales strategy, day-to-day operations, staffing, and financial forecasting. A sample business plan is provided, so you can follow along with the development of a real-world company. Show less

Every employee is different, but unfortunately many leaders use a one-size-fits-all approach to leading. In doing so, these otherwise well-intentioned leaders are working harder than they should while not getting all they could out of their teams.

Lead Inside the Box gives leaders a way to get the best out of their teams by focusing their energy where it will make the biggest difference. It teaches leaders how to:

- Figure out where they are currently investing their time and… Show more

Every employee is different, but unfortunately many leaders use a one-size-fits-all approach to leading. In doing so, these otherwise well-intentioned leaders are working harder than they should while not getting all they could out of their teams.

Lead Inside the Box gives leaders a way to get the best out of their teams by focusing their energy where it will make the biggest difference. It teaches leaders how to:

- Figure out where they are currently investing their time and energy across their teams
- Identify the unique leadership needs of each team member
- Make smarter decisions about how and where to invest their time and energy to get the best results out of everyone

Through simple frameworks brought to life with stories from the trenches, leaders will be able to see their own teams--and themselves--from a new perspective. Paradoxically these methods will enable leaders to improve their team's performance exponentially while expending half the effort. Show less

Released October 18, 2011
(Available for sale at http://amzn.to/mrWEAn)
Based on Mike’s popular "Leadership Maxims" training course, One Piece of Paper teaches leaders how to articulate their philosophy on a single piece of paper. By asking themselves a series of simple yet thought-provoking questions across four aspects of leadership, readers create a concise, powerful and deeply meaningful set of personal leadership maxims. The result is a living document that serves as a behavioral… Show more

Released October 18, 2011
(Available for sale at http://amzn.to/mrWEAn)
Based on Mike’s popular "Leadership Maxims" training course, One Piece of Paper teaches leaders how to articulate their philosophy on a single piece of paper. By asking themselves a series of simple yet thought-provoking questions across four aspects of leadership, readers create a concise, powerful and deeply meaningful set of personal leadership maxims. The result is a living document that serves as a behavioral touchstone for leaders and their teams. From this one piece of paper, leaders can clarify for themselves and communicate to others their values, passions, goals and standards. It's a unique and axiomatic approach that has consistently helped Mike's corporate clients lead more decisively and effectively. Come learn more about the book and join the conversation at http://www.onepieceofpaper.com. Show less