Depending on segment length, style of program, whether the format allows for multiple guests and whether a live audience is present, there are a variety of ways to bring Don Shapiro’s appearance to life discussing current events, the business world and his discoveries on organization success and decision making. Regardless of format and segment ideas used, Don will bring his enthusiastic, high energy and conversational style to the program.
Current Events
The events in the news are really about people who made choices good or bad. It’s their decisions that caused the event. Don Shapiro is an expert on how and why people make choices and how to think out virtually any type of decision. He can offer a fresh and often unique perspective on what choices should have been made and why.
Economy
Why the government and politicians can’t fix the economy.
Why the recession just keeps on keeping on. This economic nightmare turns out to be a lot more than just a recession and will last a lot longer than anyone imagines.
If small business is the key to jump start the economy, then the answer lies in incentives to get them to hire more employees fast as well as buy more equipment. Small businesses don’t need or want loans. They want an incentive that will reduce their risk in making an expansion effort. They don’t want to add to their risk by increasing their debt.
Muslim Controversy
9/11, The Mosque and Muslims: How we gave legitimacy and power to a gang of murdering thugs and how we can take it away
Politicians Trashing People
Why trashing people we disagree with is a greater threat to America than bad legislation
Healthcare Reform
Why the entire healthcare reform debate completely ignores what causes healthcare cost to rise and the only thing that can fix it.
Why existing healthcare reform isn’t the reform the U.S. needs.
The FDA is needlessly raising medical cost and no one seems to care.
Ending Somalia Piracy
How current surveillance technology and military methods could effectively solve Somalia Piracy
Contracting Antibiotic Resistant Infections In Hospitals
How to solve the growing crisis of people contracting antibiotic resistant infections in hospitals once and for all.
Illegal Drugs And The Mexican Cartels
Drug users tainted by blood money. If no one in America bought illegal drugs, the Mexican drug cartels would go out of business and 28,000 people wouldn’t have died in Mexico’s war against them.
What Schools Don’t Teach
Passing test is not the same as passing real life. How schools are failing to teach children what they need to know to succeed in the real world.
Bad Decisions
Everywhere we look it’s easy to find bad decisions. Seems like we are seeing more than ever before of maybe it’s just that the media is reporting more of them. If someone made a choice about anything, Don’s the guy to interview for a truly fresh perspective.
The Failure of General Motors
How 30 years of bad decisions by General Motors top management toppled an American icon, not the recession
Why Executive Make Bad Decsions
Why do we continue to see bright, educated executives making terrible choices
Assumptions That Tanked Our Economy
False assumptions by a large number of banking, mortgage and wall street executives tanked our economy. All that advanced education and years of experience didn’t seem to cause them to raise a red flag.
Movie Studio Executives In La La Land
It’s the movie not the star that determines box office receipts. Why Hollywood executives continue to get it wrong and how this affects the quality (or lack of) movies we see.
What’s holding Facebook back from listening to its users before it implements something? Web 2.o and social media does not exempt organizations from the same realities that have caused other large firms to stumble.
British Petroleum
BP knew there were problems with that well way before it blew up so why didn’t they shut it down and do a thorough investigation?
What Were They Thinking?
Tiger Woods, Kanye West, Lindsay Lohen, Paris Hilton and more famous people act as if they can defy reality…until they fall and fall big.
Organization Success
Don Shapiro has been studying why some organizations succeed while others don’t, why some do better than others, and why some grow and some decline. He started making these discoveries over three decades ago. Now, with 25 years of experience as a management and marketing consultant who has worked with organizations in 30 different industries, Don Shapiro offers insights into success based on his real world observations.
Strategy
What’s the best strategy for a business right now?
What happens when businesses fail to think strategically about what they are doing?
Customer value is the one concept that links the product or service, company and shareholder together under one common strategy so that everyone wins.
The real difference between the most successful organizations and the rest is how well their people think. This is the single most important factor in organization success and the one that most organizations don’t even address.
For all the emphasis on quality and service, why are so many firms falling short and why are their customers letting them get away with it.
When a business changes its strategy, why does it have to change its structure?
Implementation
Businesses usually fail to get the full benefit of their strategies and innovations because of poor implementation.
Implementing anything generally requires a lot more than most executives and owners realize which is why they tend to not get all the results possible.
If American businesses fully implemented all their strategies and ideas to the max, the economy would rebound in no time.
Employee Turnover
Character-Based Leaders retain employees longer because they build trust and help their employees win at life.
Since employee turnover affects sales, profits, quality and service, shouldn’t it be a factor in figuring management bonuses?
Employee turnover often occurs because the actual job tends to be different than what the employee expected. Using an accurate job preview at the beginning of the selection process can dramatically lower turnover.
The average managers hiring effectiveness is only 33% because they primarily focus on the reasons to reject a job candidate and don’t spend enough time on the positive reasons to accept the candidate.
RIP Job Resumes: it’s time to move on instead of trying to fix what’s broken beyond repair.
Most firms don’t have a clue what causes new hires to leave in the first few months.
Employee turnover literally affects everything an organization does and how well it does it so it’s surprising that executives and owners tolerate it.
Sales
Closing the sale is about raising the customer’s perceptions of value as high as possible. Customer’s determine their perceptions of value based on what they consider important and unimportant.
The single most important factor affecting sales performance is how well a sales person understands the way a prospect thinks out a decision to buy and applies this roadmap when talking with the prospect.
While almost all sales people now understand the importance of uncovering the prospect’s needs, very few understand exactly what a need really is and when it is serious and compelling enough to justify buying something.
Dealing with the prospects price resistance is not about objection handling or fancy techniques. When sales people uncover all the prospects needs, they have the information necessary to justify their price.
Sales people everywhere are complaining about the poor quality of the leads they are given which waste a tremendous amount of their valuable time and reduces the amount of sales they produce.
Marketing
The principles of marketing apply as much to Web 2.0, social media and the internet…just with new tools and methods. Unfortunately, there a lot of self appointed amateur marketers out there who never learned this and too many pros who’ve forgotten.
Perfect marketing means zero advertising. Marketing is not advertising. Advertising and promotion represent the last step of the marketing process. It starts with the creation of a product or service that will satisfy customer needs.
One of the greatest challenges every marketer faces is figuring out who their ideal customer is, not how to promote what they offer.
Marketing starts by understanding a prospective customer’s perception of reality. It is from this perception that a product or service is born which might become a company or even a new industry.
Listening to the customer needs to be elevated about a 1000% above its existing level. Companies think they are actually listening to their customers when, in reality, they are seeking limited feedback that reflects less than 25% of the customers total perceptions about them.
Sales people in every industry are complaining about the poor quality of leads they are getting from marketing. Marketing thinks it’s doing a great job because of the quantity of leads they are sending sales people. Marketing hasn’t figured out how to use today’s modern internet and electronic based lead generation methods to qualify and filter leads so only high quality targeted leads that have a potential to buy are given to sales people.
Leadership
We face a leadership crisis in organizations at all levels. To move our country, economy and organizations forward requires strong, principled leadership.
People trust your character, not what you do.
Managing and leading are two different things. Managers keep things running. Leaders lead us into the future.
A leader doesn’t need a position or title. Giving someone a fancy title doesn’t mean they can lead or anyone will follow them.
Every employee needs to lead some of the time and every manager needs to lead all of the time.
It’s all about people. The best strategies, plans and innovations mean nothing unless a organization has employees and leaders who can make it happen.
Why one time training classes and other onetime events don’t work. What it takes to produce a long term, sustained improvement in performance.
Consulting
Consulting is a calling, not a career choice. Too many MBA’s are making a choice to go into consulting often because of the high starting salaries. But many of them are not wired to be a good consultant.
The most frustrating thing about consulting is when clients love the recommendations but don’t do anything about it or can’t seem to implement them effectively.
Conceptual thinking is at the core of solving problems, creating great strategies and innovations and getting everyone to implement a plan with enthusiasm. First Concepts name grew out of the recognition that everything starts with a concept.
