Printing Industry Commentary & Analysis

The Biggest Constraint of All

Published June 3, 2026

Outside of competent people, the biggest constraint on the long-term success of your business is the lifetime value of the commercial relationships contained in your customer base. In the article, Wayne Lynn explores how to drive growth when the only constraint you have left is found in the sales department.

Six Keys to Better Leadership Performance

Published May 20, 2026

Wayne Lynn looks at The Six Leadership Actions, which derive from a philosophy that the key to improvement in a business usually comes from the efforts of leadership to drive fear out of the organization, as fear inhibits open, honest, and willing feedback about what the real problems are that are holding a company back from success.

Give Your People Good Leadership

Published May 6, 2026

If you want a thriving culture where people are engaged and productive, give them leaders who fit the role. Wayne Lynn describes what good leadership looks like.

Two Keys to Better Employee Performance

Published April 22, 2026

Even if automation and AI transform your business into a much lower headcount situation, the employees you are left with will need a couple of key things: good leaders and the assurance their higher-level needs can be met working for your company. Read on to find out why.

Insights into Unlocking Employee Motivation

Published April 8, 2026

Revisiting a previous theme, Wayne Lynn adds new thinking and perspective to the challenge of getting the most out of our people. This article starts a short series on smart leadership focused on unlocking the discretionary energy employees could, if motivated to do so, invest in making your company better, more productive, and more profitable.

Keeping Score: Let Me Count the Ways

Published March 25, 2026

As industry consolidations continue, Wayne Lynn takes a look at the thought process that guides the dynamics of companies looking to acquire print businesses.

How Does Product Mix Impact Your Profitability?

Published March 11, 2026

Do you understand your product mix? Can you describe it in measurable terms? What are the elements of the mix that work in your favor? What elements work against you? Do you have a lot of customers who are a poor fit for your company? As hard as profits are to come by it could be great investment of your time to look into “the Mix.”

Proactively Managing Your Time

Published February 25, 2026

Business leaders usually allocate their time by lining up potential tasks according to their perceived importance to strategy and crucial priorities until they run out of time. Wayne Lynn explains why this thinking is flawed and how to resolve the dilemma.

Connecting Strategy and Near-Term Priorities

Published February 11, 2026

Whether or not you have built a strong strategy is often not apparent until you have accumulated a few years of successful achievement of short-term goals. Wayne Lynn explains how the groundwork done in creating strategy results in the setting of long-term visionary goals—but unless you break them down into successive short-term goals, you don’t stand a chance of getting there.

Growing Your Business Over Time

Published January 28, 2026

The hardest thing to get your arms around in running a business is reliably forecasting the future sales needed to grow the business. Wayne Lynn explains why this is so complicated, and offers some suggestions for improving sales projections.

Dealing With Outliers

Published January 14, 2026

One of my favorite employees of all time had a saying he used when things weren’t going well, and nobody seemed to have any idea of what to do about it. His saying was, “We have a whole lot of knowledge, but not much understanding.” Using the thorny issue of product mix and its impact on performance, Wayne Lynn begins a series of articles on how to dig out the nature of the problem, how to analyze it, and, finally, how to do something positive with your new found knowledge.

Changing Priorities in What You Measure

Published December 3, 2025

There are many many tools available to help measure the success of a print business. Wayne Lynn focuses on three metrics that are of particular importance.

How to Find the Right Employees

Published November 20, 2025

One of the big challenges these days is finding employees. Print business leadership expert Wayne Lynn offers some tips and suggestions for finding not just employees, but the right employees, and how to retain them.

Why You Should be Looking at AI

Published November 19, 2025

A lot of commentary on AI is missing a key point: people inside and outside of our industry, are still talking about the pre-AI world. That’s the wrong point of view. We’re now living in the post-AI world. Wayne Lynn explains how you don’t need an AI strategy separate from your business strategy. You need a business strategy that assumes AI exists.

Making Decisions about Strategy

Published October 22, 2025

Following the conclusion of the Smart Decision-Making Series, Wayne Lynn turns to leadership, strategy, and decision-making/problem solving, and shows how inseparable they all are. Success in a 21st-century business requires large amounts of all three disciplines.

Commit—Make It Happen and Learn As You Go

Published October 8, 2025

In the latest installment of the Smart Decisions series, Wayne Lynn explains what’s needed to successfully implement a solution to your problem.

Choose—Decide the Optimal Solution

Published September 17, 2025

In the latest installment of the Smart Decisions series, Wayne Lynn explains how all the previous steps of the decision-making process have led up to the moment when you decide the ultimate solution.

Create—Find Promising Solutions

Published September 3, 2025

In the latest installment of the Smart Decisions series, Wayne Lynn explores how to amass a set of promising solutions to the initial problem.

Causes—Make the Right Diagnosis

Published August 20, 2025

In the latest installment of the Smart Decisions series, Wayne Lynn focus on understanding the root causes of a particular problem: identifying them, forming hypotheses to test them as the true cause, and verifying factual input separately from opinions of interested stakeholders.

Solve the Right Problem: Get Clear on What it is Before You Start

Published August 6, 2025

Albert Einstein once said that the formulation of a problem is more essential than its solution; poorly thought through solutions could eventually be the root cause of an even worse future problem. In the latest installment of the Smart Decisions series, Wayne Lynn explores how to make sure you know what the actual problem is before you try to solve it.

Problem-Solving: the Key to Strategic Success

Published July 23, 2025

In the latest installment of the Smart Decision-Making series, Wayne Lynn looks at the process of solving problems and, in addition, finding the leverage points that keep problems solved instead of becoming the seeds of the next-level problem that replaces it.

Making Personal Decisions

Published July 9, 2025

In the latest installment of the Smart Decision-Making series, Wayne Lynn looks at making personal vs. business decisions, and why we are prone to making mistakes in our personal decision making.

De-Biasing Your Decisions

Published June 25, 2025

In the latest installment of the Smart Decision-Making series, Wayne Lynn explores how making effective decisions are often undermined by behavioral biases and how to remove those biases.

Learning From Your Decisions

Published June 11, 2025

In the latest installment of the Smart Decision-Making series, Wayne Lynn looks at how the ability to evaluate how a decision turned out is an extremely valuable tool.

Implementing Decisions

Published May 28, 2025

When a decision has been made the job is, at best, half done. In the latest installment of the Smart Decision-Making series, Wayne Lynn explores how to implement that decision.

Making the Decision

Published May 14, 2025

In the latest installment of the Smart Decision-Making series, Wayne Lynn looks at how a problem has been framed, how options have been identified, and those options evaluated. Now, the information you are using needs to be structured for maximum clarity about the strengths and weaknesses of options.

Evaluating Potential Solutions

Published April 30, 2025

In the latest installment of the Smart Decision-Making series, Wayne Lynn looks at how evaluating options determines the outcome of the decision you need to make. If you find that the criteria are hard to come up with, you may want to reframe the problem.

Explore Imaginative Solutions

Published April 16, 2025

In the latest installment of the Smart Decision-Making series, Wayne Lynn looks at how brainstorming—and other creative exercises—can improve a team’s decision-making abilities.

Framing the Decision to Be Made

Published April 2, 2025

In the latest installment of the Smart Decision-Making series, Wayne Lynn expands on how following a well-defined process works best in making decisions by discussing how framing the decision into a workable form is the first step.

Working with a Process

Published March 19, 2025

In the latest installment of the Smart Decision-Making series, Wayne Lynn discusses the detailed process by which decisions can be made.

Smart Decision-Making Is Key To Strategic Success

Published March 5, 2025

Smart decision-making is key to strategic success. In this article, the first in a new series called Smart Decision-Making, Wayne Lynn introduces the steps in a process to ensure decisions are well thought-through.

Talent: Where Leadership and Strategy Meet

Published February 19, 2025

You can have the best value proposition, the most unique conversion process, a brilliant profit formula, and plenty of money. But if you don’t have your better talent in the most critical jobs in your company, you probably won’t win. In this final installment of the Smart Strategy series, Wayne Lynn explains.

Your Business Model—The People Resource

Published February 5, 2025

In the latest edition of his Smart Strategy Insights Series, Wayne Lynn explains how talented and motivated people doing jobs they are well suited for can be the competitive advantage you need to outperform the competition in your market. How do you build a team that can help your company meet its goals?

Your Business Model—The Profit Formula

Published January 22, 2025

In the latest edition of his Smart Strategy Insights Series, Wayne Lynn explains how to devise and then test the assumptions you make in gauging profitability.

Your Business Model—Key Processes

Published January 8, 2025

In the latest edition of his Smart Strategy Insights Series, Wayne Lynn explains how key processes, as well as rules, metrics, and norms, that make the profitable delivery of the customer value proposition repeatable and scalable are a necessary component of a usable business model.

Your Business Model: The Resources Needed to Make it Work

Published December 18, 2024

In the latest edition of his Smart Strategy Insights Series, Wayne Lynn identifies a print business’s key resources and how they deliver the customer value proposition profitably.

Customer Value Proposition: Preferred Sales Channels

Published December 4, 2024

In the latest edition of his Smart Strategy Insights Series, Wayne Lynn explains how print sales channels are changing and that, if you don’t already have a good ecommerce solution, make installing one a priority.

Customer Value Proposition: Job to be Done

Published November 20, 2024

In the latest edition of his Smart Strategy Insights Series, Wayne Lynn explains how to understand where in the customer’s value chain your products and services fit.

Customer Value Proposition: Product/Solution Offering

Published November 6, 2024

In the latest edition of his Smart Strategy Insights Series, Wayne Lynn explains how you must have the capabilities to provide the “deliverables” the customer needs to secure their desired outcomes.

Customer Value Proposition: Target Customer

Published October 23, 2024

In the latest edition of his Smart Strategy Insights Series, Wayne Lynn explains how to know who your best customers are, what they look like, and why they’re your best customers.

You’ve Got 30 Seconds, What Can Your Business Do For Me?

Published October 9, 2024

In the latest edition of his Smart Strategy Insights Series, Wayne Lynn explains why, without a Customer Value Proposition, your business is like a ship without a rudder.

The Relationship Between Strategy and Business Models

Published September 25, 2024

In the latest installment in the Smart Strategy series, Wayne Lynn explains why It is helpful to map your strategy onto your business model—and to do this requires an understanding of the components, what each does, and how they interrelate.

Why is Strategy Necessary?

Published September 11, 2024

If the goal of a business is to make money, both now and in the future, how does strategy help that happen? In the latest edition of bis Smart Strategy Insights Series, Wayne Lynn explains.

The Goal Approach to Strategy

Published September 4, 2024

In the latest installment of the Smart Strategy Insights series, Wayne Lynn takes an in-depth look at the critical success factors that must be done well for businesses to make a solid profit.

Value-Based Strategy

Published August 21, 2024

In the latest installment in the Smart Strategy Insights series, Wayne Lynn takes an in-depth look at how printing companies can create and grow their value by helping other members of their value chain: customers, employees, and suppliers, grow their value.

An Overview of Strategy So Far

Published July 24, 2024

In the latest installment in the Smart Strategy Insights series, Wayne Lynn looks at the broad outlines of what strategy is and how it is created.

To Create Your Strategy, You Must Narrow Your Focus

Published July 10, 2024

In the latest installment in the Smart Strategy Insights series, Wayne Lynn explains how, if your strategy is to address your best opportunities for value creation, you need to narrow the number of possible priorities down to a very short list.

Analysis of Performance—The Current Reality

Published June 26, 2024

In the latest installment in the Smart Strategy Insights series, Wayne Lynn explains how to create a strategy for the upcoming strategic planning period.

Strategy Does Not Exist in a Vacuum

Published June 12, 2024

In the latest installment in the Smart Strategy Insights series, Wayne Lynn explains how strategy is possible only after looking at the big picture of the economy, society, and industry your company is part of. Looking at the industries of your customers will help to predict trends, and changes in trends. These inevitably impact the growth or decline of your business.

The Essence of Strategy

Published May 22, 2024

In the second installment in his Smart Strategy Insights, Wayne Lynn explains how “strategy” is figuring out how to overcome the obstacles that stand between where you are and where you want to go.

Smart Strategy Insights

Published May 8, 2024

Wayne Lynn kicks off his new Smart Strategy Insights series with an identification of what he means by strategy, which its components are, and why it is a vital skill set for leaders to possess.

Behavioral Competence Equals Leadership Effectiveness

Published April 24, 2024

Wayne Lynn wraps up his Smart Leader series by looking at the impact of behavior on leadership and how it’s key to effective implementation and achievement of your organization’s strategy and goals.

Are You Cut Out for Leadership?

Published March 27, 2024

Leaders can be identified and developed. Wayne Lynn explains how, just like determining if a job candidate is a good fit for the job, leaders can be assessed for fit to the leadership role.

Learning Dual Awareness/Achieving Adaptive Capacity

Published March 13, 2024

The ability to adapt to VUCA conditions is critical to 21st century leadership success. Wayne Lynn explains how learning Dual Awareness is a major step toward adaptive leadership and, especially, making decisions quickly in a developing crisis.

Deliberate Calm

Published February 28, 2024

Deliberate calm is the mindset necessary to make smart, effective decisions in the VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity) world we live in. Decisions made in this context require Dual Awareness, combining self-awareness and situational awareness. Wayne Lynn explains how.

A Process for Strengthening Problem Behavior

Published February 14, 2024

Wayne Lynn looks at how paradoxical imbalances cause self-defeating behaviors when stress builds beyond manageable levels, presenting problems for leaders in maintaining the trust and support of subordinates.

Paradoxical Competencies

Published January 24, 2024

In the latest installment of his Smart Leader Insights series, Wayne Lynn looks at “paradoxical competencies,” which are key to predicting the behavior of individuals and teams, as well as effective performance as a leader.

Putting Things in Perspective

Published January 10, 2024

In the latest installment of his Smart Leader Insights series, Wayne Lynn ties together some of the behavioral aspects of leadership and identifies areas for future investigation.

Origins of Your Behavior: How You Became You

Published December 6, 2023

In the latest installment of his Smart Leader Insights series, Wayne Lynn looks at how understanding how our behavior has led to the development of certain positive and negative traits can help us to look for and capitalize on our potential for growth.

Hire Smarter

Published November 29, 2023

In the latest installment of his Smart Leader Insights series, Wayne Lynn looks at how behavioral trait testing can lead to better hiring decisions.

Self-Awareness: It Helps to Know Who You Are

Published November 15, 2023

In the latest installment of his Smart Leader Insights series, Wayne Lynn looks at how self-awareness—or understanding the behavioral factors that explain how we normally behave—is a key element of mastering leadership.

Four Core Leadership Behaviors

Published November 1, 2023

In the latest installment of his Smart Leader Insights series, Wayne Lynn looks at four leadership behaviors that have almost universal applicability.

Smart Leader Insights

Published October 18, 2023

Wayne Lynn introduces his new “Smart Leader Insights” series with a preview of the articles to come in the next several months.

How Leadership Works

Published September 27, 2023

In the first installment in this new “Smart Leader Insights” series, Wayne Lynn explores how leadership works, all the moving parts of leadership, and how to become a better leader.

Moving/Motivating Employees Through Change

Published September 6, 2023

In his last article, Adaptive Capacity, Wayne Lynn discussed the importance of adapting to change effectively. In some ways, there is nothing in the leader’s toolkit quite as important. In this article, Wayne gives the leader solid advice on what to do to help their employees adapt to change.

Adaptive Capacity

Published August 30, 2023

To lead an organization and get people to do what the organization needs done, the leader needs a deep knowledge of herself as, many times, your success as a leader pivots around your ability to manage yourself and your reactions to changes in circumstances. From many perspectives, this is the defining characteristic of the best-in-class leader.

Help Wanted: Building a Performance-Based Culture Starts with Better Hiring Decisions

Published August 8, 2023

Print businesses today have a need for significant efforts to improve productivity to offset a shrinking and increasingly expensive labor market. The purpose of the article is to develop an understanding of how involved and time-consuming leading this effort can be.

How Hard Do You Look at Your Talent?

Published July 19, 2023

Contributor Wayne Lynn explains in depth how to evaluate how your business is performing by creating a “composite” client and building a situation where a company has declining performance driven mostly by issues with customers and salespeople. The body of this article is a memo written to the owner of this hypothetical client.

Building a Performance-Based Culture Starts with Better Hiring Decisions

Published June 19, 2023

This is the fourth in a series of five articles addressing the need for significant efforts to improve productivity to offset a shrinking and increasingly expensive labor market. The purpose of the article was to develop an understanding of how involved and time consuming the CEO/owner should plan for in leading this effort. In the last article, I provided a long list of recommendations for the reader’s consideration. I concluded that one specific example would be a good way to get the point across. Read on, I hope you enjoy!

Productivity Improvement Options

Published May 31, 2023

This article is the third in the series on how to incorporate productivity improvement into your growth strategies for the foreseeable future. What approaches to improvement should you consider? This article has a list of five general groupings of ideas and recommendations. Hopefully, it will prompt the reader to generate even more. Building on a long-running theme, we continue to emphasize that improving the personal effectiveness of employees and improving business productivity overlap and work together. Half of the ideas listed touch on various aspects of what that entails.

Setting Appropriate Productivity Goals

Published May 17, 2023

In his last article Wayne Lynn talked about the fundamentals of measuring your company’s productivity. In this post, he uses that discussion to talk about setting smart, appropriate goals for improving productivity in your firm. Wayne also starts the conversation around how you meet your new goals. Read on…

Measuring Your Productivity

Published April 24, 2023

In Wayne’s last article, he discussed the difficulty of growing your business in the environment we are dealing with today. Growth creates new jobs. These jobs will be difficult to fill. Improving productivity to offset the shortage of talent is becoming the primary path to growing your business. Wayne ended the article with five things for reader’s to consider to move in this direction. He discusses the first one, measuring the productivity of your company, in this article. Read on…

Growing Through Difficult Times

Published March 28, 2023

Having looked at the labor shortage problem from different perspectives in recent articles, Wayne Lynn gives his thoughts on root causes and how they still impact our companies going forward. The most difficult problem we face may well be trying to grow in the coming decade. Read on and see why Wayne thinks this could be our coming reality.

Making Your Business Future-Ready

Published March 9, 2023

The first principle of managing your human assets (talent) is to put qualified people in jobs they are behaviorally suited to perform. Sounds hard but it’s easier than you might think if you do it the right way. In this article, Wayne Lynn shows how to take the first step in the process of preparing the people side of your business for the future.

Competence in Leadership

Published February 22, 2023

How to go about developing leaders is not well understood. Yes, there are certain types of knowledge that is needed and relatively easy to come by. There are important skills that help the accomplishment of a leader’s objectives and there are many sources to drawn from to learn them. The right type of experience can play an important role and it’s typically not hard to discern If a developing leader has that or not. Most people, however, are not aware of a number of behavioral competencies that, when mastered, are highly predictive of success in leadership. Wayne Lynn introduces the most important one in this article to illustrate the point.

The Competent Business

Published February 2, 2023

It has never been harder to survive and thrive in the graphics industry. Increasingly, the bar is rising on what is required of owners, CEOs, and employees. Are you thinking about how to improve the overall competence of yourself and your people?

Help Your People Become the Difference You Seek

Published December 8, 2022

Give your people the tools to become self-aware. Teach them to move beyond their self-defeating behaviors. The closer they get to their full potential, the closer your business will get to its potential. Contributor Wayne Lynn explains how.

The Leadership Challenge Is in the Context

Published November 16, 2022

In his last article, Wayne Lynn talked about the contextual realities that permeate leadership. Those realities often have paradoxical elements that require the leader to modulate his/her approach to most effectively deal with the situation in front of them. In this article Wayne goes a step further by describing what he believes is the crux of the leader’s context in the current environment.

Effective Leaders Manage Paradoxes

Published October 27, 2022

Leadership is complex. There are many ways to look at and examine it in our efforts to understand what it is and what it does. There are three things that seem to be universal. It is about the interaction of leaders, followers, and the context within which they reside and operate. In this article, Wayne Lynn takes a look at this topic in an effort to start digging out what it is that makes leaders effective.

The Leadership Void

Published September 27, 2022

In previous articles, Wayne has discussed the worldwide issue of employee disengagement: what it is, what causes it, and how pervasive it is. This article begins a look at root causes. First up is poor leadership, which stems from poor decisions relative to who gets hired, promoted, and developed as leaders for the future. Effective leaders are the only people in an organization who can change the conditions that lead to disengagement.

A Reason to Show Up

Published May 5, 2022

If you really want to grow your business over the next decade you will be required to solve the problem of recruiting talent in a brutally competitive talent marketplace. The solution, you are likely to discover, lies not in marketing so much as it does in a form of branding. We must answer the question that is top of mind for potential employees: “Why should I choose your company to work for instead of Amazon, Google, or some e-commerce company?” (And remember, our problem is not that we are printers. People are looking for something we can provide as well as anybody. They are looking for purpose, relevance, and a place where they feel good about belonging to.)

How Seriously Do You View Yourself As a Leader?

Published April 7, 2022

In a talent market where demand exceeds supply and our industry is learning to compete for new people, leadership has never been more important. Does your ability to be an effective leader help or hinder your success in attracting new, young talent? Wayne Lynn looks at this issue from the perspective of a potential new hire. You may want to read this…

Better People Decisions

Published March 17, 2022

Attracting top talent to your business in this labor market is not for the weak. It helps if you have an employee value proposition that resonates with prospective new hires. How you make hiring, promotion, and development decisions is a key factor in not only making good decisions for your business but can function as a differentiator in the market as you compete for talent. Wayne Lynn weighs in on this issue and has helpful thoughts to consider.

Getting Real About Finding Labor

Published March 3, 2022

An industry dealing with labor shortages nestled inside an economy with labor shortages is a rough place to be. Competing not only with other members of the print-related ecosystem but with companies outside it who have significant recruiting advantages is not for the faint of heart nor for the uninformed. Wayne Lynn takes a look at how large companies create places to work that attract the people we want to hire very effectively. Can we learn from them?

Can We Support Our Future Growth?

Published February 17, 2022

Our industry has been transformed by digital technology. On a larger scale, so has our society and the economy that underpins it. It is ironic that changes of such magnitude have us standing on the doorstep of a talent shortage that has no easy answers. In the midst of so much positive change, our leaders have not, to date, created the skills and talent needed to handle the shifting needs of an emerging new economic order. In this article, Wayne Lynn explains our dilemma and kicks off an appeal to industry leaders to adopt a growth mindset, think outside the box, and look to the long term.

Talent and Culture as a Competitive Advantage

Published January 13, 2022

In this article Wayne Lynn presents the case for gaining competitive advantage through leadership development, helping employees meet their needs, and helping employees develop into better behavioral matches to high performers in their chosen jobs. Adopting this approach will, over time, strengthen the talent base of the business and foster a performance oriented culture.

Improving Profits through Employee Engagement

Published October 21, 2021

You already measure important KPIs in your business. You look at your financials and monitor things like cash position, inventories, age of receivables, maintenance records, equipment productivity, daily production output, etc. When was the last time you measured employee engagement? Wayne Lynn explains how people are the core asset of your business, and why it may be time you started learning much more about them.

The Paradox of Organization

Published September 23, 2021

In the last stage of the process of getting things done we confront the issue of Organization. Being organized and flexible at the same time can be maddening. Without this behavioral competency we can make great decisions on a routine basis and have them fail continually. Wayne Lynn explains why.

Overcoming Implementation Issues

Published August 19, 2021

In his fourth of six articles dealing with improving how we get things done, Wayne Lynn looks at getting past issues that delay and potentially stifle the implementation of goal-supporting business decisions. Leaders and their teams need to develop and support the Inventive mindset. Read on to learn more.

The Motivation to Get Things Done

Published July 15, 2021

Decisions are not made in a void. They serve multiple purposes but the focus of this article is on stimulating action that moves us toward the accomplishment of goals. Last month we looked at the subject of approaching decisions in a structured way and in a way that used both sides of the human brain. The point was to make the best possible decision using what we know about how the brain works and how each side works to balance and inform the other. This month we look at finding and ensuring that the necessary motivation is in place for successful implementation of decisions and achievement of our goals

Making Better Decisions

Published June 17, 2021

In his last article, Wayne Lynn described the process of execution or “how we get things done.” It included making the decision to do something, finding the right motivation to get it implemented, and managing the stress that it naturally creates, being inventive as needed to overcome obstacles encountered along the way, and, finally, putting in place the policies and controls necessary to make sure the decision stays made but allows for changes in circumstances. In this article, Wayne examines the process of approaching a decision that increases your chances of success.

Improving How We Get Things Done

Published May 20, 2021

It is a truism that most problems in today’s world of organizations are created by poor implementation of change initiatives. This stems from poorly thought out decisions all the way through to not putting in place clear decision boundaries that can prevent subversion of the desired outcomes. In this article, Wayne Lynn looks underneath the components of effective implementation with an eye toward creating a deeper understanding of what’s needed to improve our ability to improve how we get things done.

How to Make Great People Decisions

Published April 22, 2021

By far, the best indicator of job success is the presence (or absence) of behavioral traits that match up with the traits of people who have exhibited strong success in the job in the past. In this article, Wayne Lynn takes a look at an approach to making people decisions that has a high probability of success. That’s the goal in making people decisions: make the decision with the highest possible probability of success, both for the person and the company. Wayne shares some of his own experiences and gives examples of why this approach works.

The Paradoxes of Stress

Published March 18, 2021

We all, at one level or another, understand that we live in difficult times. Never before have we expected, even demanded, so much from our leaders. Meeting those expectations is the most fundamental challenge for today’s leaders. Since leadership implies followership, if we don’t meet those expectations, the best we’re likely to get is disinterested and disengaged followers. We must strive to be better.

Is Your Company Self-Aware Enough to Change Successfully?

Published February 18, 2021

The writers and publishers who chronicle the world of business have been a buzzword factory for the last four decades. There’s no need to list them here, but probably the most frequently mentioned topic in the last few years has been how to change an organization into something that has a better chance of surviving and thriving. In this article, Wayne Lynn discusses the importance of becoming self-aware. Knowing what your strengths, weaknesses, and blind spots are provides the best starting point for successful change. Read on…

Leadership through the Lens of Paradox

Published January 12, 2021

It is often said that the level of thinking (and leadership) that got us to where we are today will not take us to the next level. In this article, Wayne Lynn talks about learning to manage paradox. It requires individual and organizational growth. It is sorely needed in a world beset with pandemics, civil unrest, and political polarization.

Strategic People Management

Published November 19, 2020

As millennials move into leadership and ownership responsibilities in our industry they are uniquely positioned and qualified to take a strategic view of the management and development of our human assets. In this article, Wayne Lynn takes a look at this opportunity and how it can be capitalized upon. Read on to see how the future can be better shaped by better use of our people.

The Paradoxes of Stress

Published October 15, 2020

We all, at one level or another, understand that we live in difficult times. Never before have we expected, even demanded, so much from our leaders. Meeting those expectations is the most fundamental challenge for today’s leaders. Since leadership implies followership, if we don’t meet those expectations the best we’re likely to get is disinterested and disengaged followers. We must strive to be better.

Innovating the Proofing Cycle

Published September 17, 2020

Printers need to consider innovations that negate the need for proofs (hard or soft) except under exceptional circumstances. Hint: train the customer to submit print-ready PDFs that are truly ready to go. You will still need to do preflight, etc., but the emphasis should be on taking the time lag created by the proofing cycle out of the process.

The Impact of Remote Working

Published August 20, 2020

What potential business disruptions should we be thinking about post-COVID-19? There are several. Most of them, at first glance, seem inconsequential but, on closer examination, could have significant impact. In this article, Wayne Lynn looks at changes in how we work and examines how they could impact the way we do business after the crisis has passed.