Learn more about Geoff Colvin

Whether or not the Supreme Court rules in favor of the president’s health care plan, companies are going to find a way to cut costs.

By Geoff Colvin, senior editor-at-large Fortune

FORTUNE — What Fortune 500companies really want from U.S. health care reform is pretty basic: They want sustainable costs and healthy, productive employees. But business doesn’t just want those things; it desperately needs them, and it’s going to get them, one way or another. How it gets them — the answer will depend partly on the Supreme Court’s Obamacare decision in June — could be traumatic for America’s health care system.

The American health care system is almost unique in the extent to which it funnels health spending through employers. Most of the big developed nations use some type of universal single-payer system that socializes health costs across the entire economy. But about 60% of U.S. health care spending goes through employers via employer-sponsored medical insurance. That’s an expense that many of those companies’ competitors in the global economy don’t bear.

Exacerbating the problem is America’s world-topping level of health care spending — $7,164 per person in 2008, says the World Health Organization, vs. $3,922 in Germany and $265 in China. Making the problem worse, those costs are rising much faster in America than in any other major economy and are growing more rapidly than the U.S. economy. That is an unsustainable trend: If employers’ health care costs keep increasing faster than revenues, eventually 100% of revenues will be used to pay health care costs. As economist Herb Stein so wisely observed, if something can’t go on forever, it will stop.

Exactly how will it stop? Pre-Obamacare, America’s largest employers (banding together as the National Business Group on Healthcare) had a plan for controlling their employee health costs. Obamacare didn’t give them much of what they wanted. They favored an individual mandate — everyone must have insurance — which Obamacare famously includes, but they wanted to let the market set premiums. They wanted the favorable tax treatment of employer-provided insurance to remain undiluted, which it won’t be; so-called Cadillac plans will be slammed with a 40% excise tax.

More: 5 ways to healthier employees

How big employers now control costs will depend on two giant decisions. First is the Supreme Court’s ruling on the constitutionality of the individual mandate. If the justices give it a thumbs-down, employers are in a quandary. They like a mandate because it could lower their insurance costs by forcing more people into the risk pool, and in a world where everyone is legally required to maintain insurance, employers may feel less pressure to offer it. If the mandate is upheld, then everything depends on the second big decision: the voters’ choice in November. A Republican sweep would probably mean Obamacare’s repeal, while a more muddled election result probably wouldn’t.

Either of the two big decisions could kill Obamacare. If that happens, then another epic onslaught of lobbying will determine what comes next, with unforeseeable results. But if it survives, then employers face only a few options for controlling health care costs as they must.

One response is to stop providing coverage for employees and let them buy it on the new exchanges. As Fortune wrote in 2010, major employers, including AT&T (T) and Caterpillar (CAT), have begun considering that option; they’d have to pay a penalty and give employees raises, but they’d still save significant money. Another option for big employers that self-insure would be to maintain coverage but tweak it by raising co-pays or limiting the number of specialists in the network, thus nudging the sickest employees toward the exchanges. If many employers were to take either of those roads, Obamacare’s finances wouldn’t work as intended, and the program would have to be altered.

So we’re looking at three major uncertainties: the Supreme Court, the election, and the behavior of major employers. That’s a lot of moving parts. Just remember that today’s situation is unsustainable. Employers need to get their health costs under control, and they will. For their employees and the country, much depends on how they do it.

This story is from the May 21, 2012 issue of Fortune.

Geoff Colvin Speaker

Learn more about Chip Bell

San Francisco:  Berrett-Koehler Publishing has announced that Wired and Dangerous by Chip R. Bell and John R. Patterson has won a 2^nd major national book award.  After getting the 2012 Axiom Award last month, the international best-selling book has won the Independent Publishers 2012 IPPY Silver Medal in the “Business Book” category.  The book won the prestigious award over hundreds of books nominated by independent book publishers throughout North America.  It will be presented in a special awards ceremony at the beginning of the BookExpo Annual Convention in New York.  It is the first Berrett-Koehler Publishing book to win both an Axiom and IPPY award.

CHIP BELL Speaker

Learn more about Michael Treacy

“Market Leadership in a Globalizing Economy”

Globalization is a relentless march that affects every industry, every job function, every market segment and every company. Globalization of competition is both a threat to established leadership in developed markets and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for dramatic growth in developing economies. This is an overview of this new environment:

• Understand how upstart competition from developing markets look at the world differently and what it takes to blunt their inherent advantages.
• Recognize the signs when your market is about to globalize and what actions your firm must immediately take to get on an offensive footing.
• Explore the hidden costs of opportunistic dabbling in a developing economies and what it really takes to commit to market leadership in these markets.
• Discuss how local markets are shifting toward common standards of value and how that trend is shifting the optimal balance of locally customized vs. globally standardized offers.
• Understand how low cost upstart competition will reshape the customer value equation in domestic markets and make it more difficult to obtain traditional price premiums for superior products and services.
• See the potential to create a globe-spanning operating model, where the best capabilities from around the world can be lashed together to create advances in product innovation, demand generation, and product supply.
• Recognize the challenge of leaning into the future, all the while balancing the opportunities for greater short term profits in developed markets with the imperative of long term market leadership in an evolving world.
• Learn to avoid the five common mistakes companies make:
  - Placing short term profit opportunity ahead of BRIC market leadership
  - Targeting value propositions for where the market is today rather than where it is going
  - Organizing for where the business has been rather than where the market is going
  - Delegating international responsibility to foreign nationals
  - Not learning and progressing at the speed of the market

“Strategy, Innovation & Growth in a Globalizing Economy”

Globalization of markets will bring broadly different companies into direct competition with each other all around the world. To win against this competition, a company will need to harness its knowhow and reach to rebuild globe-spanning capabilities for product innovation, demand generation, and product supply. This presentation provides a framework for moving forward:

• Explore how rising transportation efficiencies and coordination capabilities are tearing down market boundaries.
• Recognize the four stages of market globalization and how to avoid getting caught flat footed when your market transitions to the next stage.
• Gain the experiences and learnings of companies in naturally globalized markets, including travel, payments, and freight.
• Discuss the four capabilities along which markets globalize – product supply, demand generation, product innovation, and customer demand – and what will be the next driver of globalization in your market.
• Evaluate the rise of common customer demands for value worldwide and whether it is occurring in your market. The biggest variation from market to market is in the mix of customer segments, not the customers themselves. While some important local customs and traditions will endure, we are all more alike than we care to believe.
• Explore how to disable the Rise from the Bottom strategy employed by Hyundai, Sany, Ranbaxy and other upstart companies challenging for global market leadership; they build a base of demand through low prices, expand market reach with rising product quality, and then use product innovation to go head-to-head with established market leaders.
• Learn how other upstarts Globally Exploit a Local Advantage to achieve hyper-growth – including Wipro, Foxconn, and ICICI Bank – but are in a race against time before their advantages run out.
• Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the Global Standards of Innovation strategy, deployed by companies such as Caterpillar, BMW and LVMH worldwide, in which the companies offer a common standard of product features and price premium worldwide under the assumption that markets will evolve to their standards. It’s a bet they aren’t likely to win.
• Learn how YUM! Brands and AO Smith have Localized their Global Expertise to gain a rapid advantage in developing markets and what advantages and disadvantages this globalization strategy holds.

“Leadership in a Globalizing Economy”

Achieving market leadership in a globalizing economy is the leadership challenge of a generation. When the dust settles, everything will be different – the composition of the management team, the design of core capabilities, the locus of operations – except the need for a single culture and a single standard of performance worldwide. Global market leadership will demand change on a scale that most organizations have rarely seen. Leaders at every level will benefit from this:

• Explore the need to construct a compelling case for action for moving from a multi-national to a global operating model and the important role of vision in creating and communicating an exciting picture of the organization’s future.
• Discuss alternative organizational structures and whether your structure reflects where the business has been or where your market is going.
• Understand how the globalization of operating models will dramatically change the locus of work and hiring needs around the world.
• Discuss the challenges and solutions to building a unified, high performance culture in an increasingly diverse workforce spread all over the world.
• Explore how to in-country leadership teams can be built that combine local knowledge with global knowhow – two-in-a-box leadership that partners local nationals with rising star expats.
• Understand how people recruiting and development must change as a business evolves from a multi-national structure to a global operating model.

“National Policy for a Globalizing Economy”

Market leadership in a global economy is the fight of a lifetime in which nothing less than the national interest is at stake. What must policy makers and shapers do to create national policies that ensure competitiveness, job gains, economic growth, and international prestige and security? There are new rules for the future:

• Understand how the United States lost market leadership in the textiles industry and with it, almost one million domestic jobs. Explore how national policies contributed to U.S. companies being unprepared to fight for global market leadership.
• Explore the role that wage rates, labor productivity, and fiscal policies play in a nation’s global competitiveness and how labor arbitrage from one country to the next is changing how companies think about where jobs should be located.
• Discuss the importance of innovation in driving labor productivity and how both the business environment and education system dramatically affect a nation’s ability to sustain innovation.
• Explore how four factors determine whether a business environment drives higher levels of innovation – competitiveness of domestic markets, ease of access to capital, labor flexibility, and levels of regulation – and how national policy shapes those factors.
• Discuss the important role that immigration policy and education capabilities serve in producing talent of superior skill and motivation and winning the global battle for jobs.
• Evaluate how corporate and individual tax policy affects where corporate headquarters, operations, and jobs are located.
• Explore the special advantage that the U.S. post-secondary education system provides to our national competitiveness and what we must do to improve that system in a globalizing economy.

Michael Treacy Speaker

Learn more about Geoff Colvin

first published in Fortune on June 20, 2011

The largest element in America’s worsening debt outlook is the growth of Medicare. If we don’t fix it the right way, the country will become dramatically poorer and weaker.

FORTUNE — We can try to fix Medicare in two ways. One is a proven winner, the other a proven loser. The stakes could scarcely be higher — and right now we’re betting on the loser.

Medicare has become the largest issue in America because it threatens the country’s economic future. Ten former chiefs of the Council of Economic Advisers, from both parties, warned in March that if we don’t get the national debt under control, the result will be “a crisis that could dwarf 2008.” The first worrying signs have since appeared; the cost of insuring against a once-unthinkable U.S. debt default rose by more than 50% in late May, and Moody’s and S&P have warned that the country’s debt rating is in peril. By far the largest element in America’s worsening debt outlook is the growth of Medicare. If we don’t fix it the right way, the country will become dramatically poorer and weaker.

One way to fix it is the Brute Force approach. That’s the concept on which Medicare was built. The federal government dictates which services are covered and how much will be paid to doctors, hospitals, and others for everything they do. To keep costs under control, Washington restricts what it covers or dials down what it pays.

How well has the Brute Force approach worked? “It never works,” says Mark McClellan, former head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The House Ways and Means Committee predicted in 1967 that the new Medicare program would cost $12 billion in 1990. Actual 1990 cost: $110 billion. (2010 cost: $523 billion.) The problem is that eternal irritant to grand Washington plans, the market. Turns out that if you unilaterally cut prices, some providers will quit providing services and some patients won’t get care, so you can’t cut too much. And if you pay providers barely profitable rates when they perform a given service, they will overperform those services, grossly inflating the government’s costs. That’s what has happened.

The other way to fix Medicare is the People Aren’t Dummies approach. It’s the concept on which most markets operate. Let people spend their own money — even if it’s given to them — and let providers compete for it. Providers aren’t dummies, so they’ll innovate in ways that bureaucrats would never think of. Consumers aren’t dummies, so they’ll choose what works for them. Quality rises, and costs stay reasonable.

The People Aren’t Dummies approach has a proven record, and it’s the opposite of Brute Force’s record. Medicare Part D, which took effect in 2006, lets users choose from competing private plans for prescription-drug coverage. “Most of those plans aren’t at all what the law envisioned,” says McClellan. Instead, they’re what consumers actually want. And Part D costs are about 45% below what was predicted when it was created.

So which approach are we banking on? You guessed it. Brute Force is the guiding principle for controlling Medicare in the health care reform law. An Independent Payment Advisory Board would control costs in any ways it sees fit; in practice its choices would be limited to cutting prices or limiting care. We’ve seen this film before.

The approach that would work, People Aren’t Dummies, is at the heart of Rep. Paul Ryan’s Medicare rescue proposal and has been demonized by Democrats and even some Republicans. But in fact it has a long history of bipartisan backing. Premium support, as it’s called in Ryan’s plan, was first proposed by two Democratic economists, Henry Aaron and Robert Reischauer. The Bipartisan Policy Center’s Debt Reduction Task Force last year proposed gradually converting Medicare to premium support. The proposals’ details differ, and hammering out agreement wouldn’t be easy. But the basic approach is solidly in the center.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that reasoned debate on Medicare seems to have become impossible. Just remember: Our future depends on choosing what works. So far we aren’t choosing it.

First Published: June 20, 2011: 6:05 AM ET

Geoff Colvin Speaker

click here to learn more about Vikram Mansharamani

Vikram Mansharamani, lecturer at Yale University, discusses his new book, “Boombustology: Spotting Financial Bubbles Before They Burst” on The Hay Advantage on BloomTV.

It’s a great interview with Vikram Mansharamani on his latest book `Boombustology’, giving an insight to what tools he can bring to your organization.  Vikram’s peice starts at 11:58 in the audio link below.

http://media.bloomberg.com/bb/avfile/vmmLcLnrOcRQ.mp3

VIKRAM MANSHARAMANI Speaker

More on Chip Bell Speaker and Author

Very big disclaimer!  There are parts of a fishing metaphor that do not work when it comes to great customer service—like bait, hook, catch, or reeling in.  But, regular fishing is to fly-fishing what whittling might be to scrimshaw; or grilling might be to gourmet confectionary baking!

Successful fly-fishing starts with a deep understanding of the fish.  Regular fish might be attracted to any old slimly worm on a hook, but a rainbow trout is very particular.  Buying or crafting a tiny lure that looks exactly like the insect the trout enjoys is an art in itself.  It means gathering up-to-date intelligence on the trout’s preferences and requirements.

Then, there is presentation.  In fly-fishing, you don’t just throw a line in the water and wait for the cork to go under.  You present the lure to the trout in a fashion that is appealing and animated.  Are you starting to see how this fits customer service?  Fly-fishing takes enormous respect for the trout and special patience to get what is offered to precisely fit a trout’s interests.

But, the key difference between regular fishing and fly-fishing is what happens after the trout accepts your offering.  Regular fishing requires you set the hook and reel in the fish.  If you did that with a fly line as thin as a thread, the weight of the fish alone would snap it allowing the trout to escape.  Just like customers, you land a trout, you don’t catch one.  The fish remains in the water until it can be gently led into a dip net.  And, then the most important part–the experience of the trout after it has been landed.  Granted, some end up in the frying pan (that part should never fit customers!)  Fly-fishing typically involves the use of a tiny barbless hook aimed at causing zero harm to the fish as it is released with minimal physical contact.  Give a rainbow trout a great experience and it will taste your lure on a future fishing trip.

Customers are particular about your offering and require a tailored offering and appealing presentation uniquely suited to their interests.  It means going to school on customers just like anglers carefully study fish.  Once a customer has accepted your offering, provide an experience that remains customer-centric from start to finish.  But, gaining a customer is only the beginning.  The goal is to get customers to return and bring their funds and friends.  How are you preparing to provide a service offering and experience that ensures your customers will want to continue to “taste your lure?”  Let’s go fishing!

May 8, 2012
National Review

“Clean energy” is the political darling of the moment. President Obama has made promotion of clean energy one of the centerpieces of his administration and his reelection effort. The Democratic National Committee claims that “clean energy” investments are “helping pave the way to a more sustainable future, creating new jobs and entire industries here in America.” Last month, the Center for American Progress, a leftist think tank, released a report that touted the need to build a clean-energy economy.

On Sunday, an editorial in the New York Times extolled the benefits of renewable energy and declared that the “clean energy industry” was “one of the few sectors to add jobs” during the recession.

It’s readily apparent that the left is rallying behind the notion of “clean energy.” But what, exactly, is it? Ah, now there’s the rub.

In March, Senator Jeff Bingaman (D, N.M.) introduced the Clean Energy Standard Act of 2012, which identifies natural gas and nuclear — along with renewable energy sources — as being “clean.” If that definition holds, then groups such as the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, and lots of others will be in the rather uncomfortable position of having to oppose Bingaman’s measure even though those very same groups regularly tout the need for more clean energy.

Proving why this is so takes only a modicum of research. The Sierra Club claims that the “gas industry is dirty, dangerous, and running amok.” It continues, saying, “The closer we look at natural gas, the dirtier it appears. . . . If we can’t protect our health and treasured landscapes from the damages caused by the natural gas industry, then we should not drill for natural gas.”

That’s a remarkable set of statements from the Sierra Club, particularly given that the group received nearly $26 million in donations from the gas industry between 2007 and 2010, most of it from Chesapeake Energy’s now-embattled CEO, Aubrey McClendon. During many of those years, the Sierra Club supported natural gas because, as Michael Brune, the group’s executive director, put it, the group’s leaders believed at the time that this fuel could “play a necessary role in helping us reach the clean energy future our children deserve.” But in February of this year, the Sierra Club changed its direction on natural gas and Brune declared that the “only safe, smart, and responsible” way to address America’s energy needs is to look beyond coal, oil, and natural gas and to focus on “sources such as wind, solar, and geothermal.”

As for nuclear, forget it. Since 1974, the club has opposed “the licensing, construction and operation of new nuclear reactors utilizing the fission process.” The group says that it willcontinue its opposition, pending “development of adequate national and global policies to curb energy over-use and unnecessary economic growth.”

Bill McKibben, perhaps the best-known environmental activist in America, also dislikes natural gas. The founder of 350.org and a leader of the movement to stop the Keystone XL pipeline, McKibben recently said that natural gas is “just a rickety pier stretching further out into the fossil fuel lake.”

A similar stance is evident at Greenpeace, which says that natural gas is “a fossil fuel, with some of the same damning negatives as coal and oil . . . The extraction of natural gas — especially via fracking — is incredibly harmful to the environment and people’s health.” The group says it isopposed to hydraulic fracturing (a.k.a. “fracking”) because the process is “wreaking havoc on communities all over the country, as well as on our climate.”

Nuclear energy is “an unacceptable risk to the environment and to humanity,” Greenpeacemaintains. “The only solution is to halt the expansion of all nuclear power, and [to force] the shutdown of existing plants.” It also says, “There is no place for dangerous expensive nuclear power in meeting future energy demand or in helping to avert catastrophic climate change.”

Despite the fact that abundant supplies of low-cost natural gas are helping the U.S. decarbonize more rapidly than the European Union, Joe Romm, a leading blogger for the Center for American Progress, has repeatedly slammed natural gas. On March 1, the same day that Senator Bingaman introduced his bill, Romm wrote that natural gas was a “bridge fuel to nowhere.” In January, Romm was even clearer about his antipathy toward the fuel, writing, “We don’t want new gas plants to displace new renewables, like solar and wind, which are going to be some of the biggest, sustainable job creating industries of the century.”

Romm, like many others on the Left, is also reflexively anti-nuclear. And given his belief in the dangers posed by carbon dioxide emissions, that opposition is remarkable. After all, if you are anti–carbon dioxide and anti-nuclear, you are pro-blackout. Nevertheless, the Center for American Progress, in its recent report on “clean energy,” ignores nuclear altogether.

What about coal? The mainstream environmental groups are uniformly opposed to coal-fired electricity. For instance, the Sierra Club is spearheading the “beyond coal” campaign, which seeks to shut down all coal-fired power plants in the U.S. The aim is to stop all coal-fired electricity production even though the newest plants coming on line are, by traditional environmental measures, extremely “clean.”

The Prairie State Energy Campus, a $5 billion state-of-the-art coal-fired plant located in southwestern Illinois, will soon begin generating electricity. The 1,600-megawatt facility, the biggest coal-fired power plant to be built in in the U.S. in many years, will produce 0.182 pounds of sulfur dioxide and 0.07 pounds of nitrogen oxide per megawatt-hour. That’s about half the allowable levels of those pollutants under the EPA’s Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, which is scheduled to take effect in 2014.

But on March 27, the EPA proposed a rule that would outlaw the construction of new plants like Prairie State because coal-fired generation units produce lots of carbon dioxide. In its proposed rule, which runs to 257 pages, the agency mentions “clean energy” six times. And that takes us to the punch line: The promotion of “clean energy” is not really about eliminating traditional pollutants such as sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and ozone; it’s aimed at cutting carbon dioxide emissions.

“Clean energy” isn’t a specific thing — it’s a marketing slogan. And the slogan is designed to obscure the green movement’s desire to impose carbon taxes, set limits on carbon dioxide emissions, or both. Politico reporters Erica Martinson and Jonathan Allen made that clear in their article on March 21 of this year. Environmental groups admit that “they’ve lost ground by tackling global warming head-on,” the two wrote. “Their best bet now lies in a bit of a bait and switch.” The result is a campaign to demonize “dirty” hydrocarbons by conflating carbon dioxide emissions with asthma.

Last year, Suedeen Kelly, a former member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said that renewable-energy mandates are a “back-end way to put a price on carbon.” Kelly’s point applies directly to Bingaman’s bill and the ongoing push for “clean energy.” But rather than have an open and honest debate about the merits of a carbon tax or the potential benefits of limiting carbon dioxide emissions, the green movement is pushing a “clean energy” stalking horse that will result in higher prices for consumers.

The bottom line is obvious: Be wary of “clean energy.” The Sierra Club is.

Original file here:

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/299295/sierra-club-opposes-clean-energy-robert-bryce#comment-bar

More on James Mapes, Speaker, Author and Consultant

Defining passion can be tricky, playing with your mind.  When you think of passion, you may have images of someone enthusiastically pursuing a goal, preaching a sermon or having a strong sexual desire for someone.  The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines ‘passion’ as an “intense, driving or overmastering feeling of conviction.”  In its Latin roots, passion also includes “suffering.”

Passion is obviously about emotion, not reason, but passion must not be confused with obsession.  When we are obsessed, we are controlled by cravings and become slaves to addictions and compulsions.  Passion is a decision.  It is choosing to devote yourself to something bigger than you, a vision of possibility for a worthwhile cause such as family, career, charity, community, country or the world.

What does the word ‘passion’ mean to you?

I have spent much time during the past several years interviewing people and researching the nature of passion and how it goes hand in hand with both success and being fully engaged in life.  My research has shown that passion is not only a core leadership trait, but also that when a leader is passionate about a vision; he or she can take others to places they would not normally go.

Passion is the fire within our soul.  It attracts others like moths to a flame and, as the American author/motivational speaker John Maxwell writes, “A great leader’s courage to fulfill his vision comes from passion, not position.”

Passion, single-mindedness, persistence and enthusiasm go hand in hand and, as the old saying goes: enthusiasm is infectious. Passion embeds an unwavering single mindedness and the ability to surmount obstacles and overcome fear.  It means that you have true grit.

Passion in a leader is a deep and abiding commitment to a cause, a vision, an enterprise. Sterling examples abound throughout history. Henry Ford provides a great passionate leader example because he just kept going, despite business failure.  Mother Teresa was a passionate leader - quiet, tiny, humble - she spent 50 years working among the poorest of the poor in Calcutta and founded the Missionaries of Charity. Walt Disney’s passion helped him overcome several setbacks, including a nervous breakdown, as well as discouragement from family and friends.  The list goes on: Mahatma Gandhi, Indra Nooyi (CEO PepsiCo), Jeff Bezos (founder of Amazon), Martin Luther King, Jr., Margaret Thatcher, John F. Kennedy, Bill Gates and Martha Stewart.

In my quest to understand the nature of passion, I had an insight that very few address: namely, that there is both a downside to passion and a price to be paid for passion.

First - the downside. For everything positive and good, there is the polar opposite.  Without perspective and a dash of reason, passion can run amok, and out-of-control desire distorts reality.  There is nothing inherently wrong about believing in what you are doing and being single-minded about doing it.  But, without perspective, passion can easily turn into fanaticism, ruthless competition, delusion, narcissism and narrow-mindedness.  When you emotionally over-invest in a project or a business, you can easily become ego-driven, blind to reality and prone to make irrational decisions.

How do you avoid these pitfalls of passion?  Surround yourself with and actively seek council from people who challenge you, instead of who simply say “yes” to every idea you have and every decision you make.  You do not want to operate in a void.  Ask for input and listen without getting defensive.

Now, let’s take a look at what first sparked me to write about The Price of Passion.  More than a year and a half ago, I decided to totally reinvent my career.  That meant taking a huge risk by going out on my own, leaving the secure umbrella of being with the same speakers’ agency for 26 years. I’d have to market myself as a speaker.  That meant that I had to re-design my website, create new video clips of speaking programs and finish a book I’ve been plugging away on for nine years.  A choice like this does not happen in a vacuum, nor does it occur without being determined, staying focused and putting in the time.  It has affected my wife, my personal assistant and friends.  It has curbed my social life and limited spontaneous vacations.  For this period of time, I’ve had to give up many pleasures, including movie-going, reading frivolous fiction books and taking off for a cup of coffee to chat with friends.  It has meant months with little financial return - until recently.  And that has not been easy.

Don’t get me wrong.  I have a lot of fun and I love what I do because I am passionate.  I take breaks, walk, work-out and meditate, because I want to avoid getting burned out.  If you are passionate about what you do, you need to keep the fire of that passion burning brightly by taking care of yourself.  I firmly believe that the price of passion is worth paying because what comes back to you - the creativity, the aliveness and the personal satisfaction - cannot be monetarily measured.

I used to think that passion was something you either have or don’t have.  But, now I am fully committed to the belief that passion can be uncovered and nurtured.  Below are a few ideas and strategies that can help you discover, reignite and sustain your passion so that you can live an exceptional life:

1. Passion is like a muscle.  You have to use it to keep it.  Recall something, anything in your life that you felt passionate about.  Close your eyes and vividly summon the memory.  Notice how it feels in your body.

2. List five of your most important values.  Your passion will always be linked with the satisfaction of your personal values.  They are your drivers.

3. Get clear about what excites you.  Answer this question.  If you could do anything you want to do and get paid for it, what would you do?   Answer without putting any judgments or restrictions on the possibility.  Make a list.  Read the list over and imagine how you might apply that to your life.  After a client of mine concluded, “I would do nothing but read,” she became a script reader for a major Hollywood producer.

4. Choose one idea that involves being of service or helping others. Make an action plan, a roadmap.  Start easy.  What could you say or do within the next 24 hours to kick off your plan?  Take that first step and take your time.

5. Create support.  You want a cheerleader to keep your passion sparked.  That might mean sitting down with a friend, declaring your intention and asking that person (people) to hold you accountable.  Surround yourself with people who are positive. Here is a little secret: you get support by helping others achieve their dreams even if the helping is just listening.

6. Visualize the end result.  When you create your future mental movie, do a check to make sure that it arouses the physical feeling of passion (excitement, curiosity, fun) in your body.

7. Keep the big picture in mind and have fun.  As long as you do that, you will stay focused, be armed to ward off the inevitable distractions, and learn to say “no” when you need to.

More on GEOFFREY COLVIN, Speaker, Author and Journalist here.

Company customer service czar Jim Bush on changing the way that cardholders are treated - and how it paid off.

By Geoff Colvin, senior editor-at-large

Jim Bush, American Express EVP of world service

FORTUNE — Call-center customer service has become a finely honed discipline, but usually it seems honed to cut time: The agent is superficially friendly, but nothing can derail that person’s mission of getting you off the phone fast. Service at American Express (AXP) wasn’t much different from that before Jim Bush was put in charge of it in 2005. His basic insight was that breaking with industry orthodoxy by transforming those conversations into less structured, more human engagements would pay off. Instead of evaluating service reps mainly by how quickly they got you off the phone, as many companies still do, he switched to the net promoter score developed by Bain’s Fred Reichheld. It’s based on one question: Would you recommend this company to a friend? AmEx’s score has risen significantly under Bush’s direction, and he was right — it pays off. Customer spending is up, attrition is down.

Bush, 54, majored in accounting at New Jersey’s Rider University. As AmEx’s executive VP of world service, he oversees some 20,000 employees, about a third of the company’s total. He talked recently with Geoff Colvin about how the company has changed the way it trains service employees, the power of personality, turning collection calls into positive experiences, and much else. Edited excerpts:

Q: When you took over and overhauled customer service, what were the most important changes you made?

A: I thought about the opportunity of capitalizing on every interaction and moving away from being a cost of doing business to being an investment in building relationships. Every one of those moments of truth is an opportunity to make a difference to customers in a personalized way. So we moved from being transaction-oriented — the investment and training had been all around how to complete the transaction — to building on the relationship with the customer. We converted from a robotic, scripted environment to a conversational environment that brings the personality to life and brings one-to-one connections, which is what ultimately builds and sustains relationships.

So when somebody calls American Express, the person on the other end has a computer screen in front of him but doesn’t have a script?

No scripts. Information is presented to the care professional — we call them “customer care professionals” because that’s what they are. They’re not service professionals; they take care of customers. We present the profile of who that customer is and other information relevant to that particular interaction. That allows the care professional to be conversant and pull out their personality and match it to the personal needs of the customer.

We’ve also modified how we measure performance. We got less focused on productivity as measured by how much time you’re on the phone and freed up our care professionals. We let the customer determine how much time they want to engage. That engagement drives value. We serve customers, not transactions.

How does the net-promoter concept work in your situation?

Our aspiration is to drive advocacy, where we get impassioned customers to tell others about their experiences with American Express. For every servicing transaction, we ask, How can we get the customer to feel better about American Express and recommend it to a friend? That’s a promoter. We’ve built a measurement system that surveys the customer and gets that feedback for every servicing transaction, and then we use that to measure [each customer care professional's] performance, complemented by some productivity indicators. Those two measures drive incentives in which we reward our customer care professionals, all the way up to me.

We’ve been able to show that increased satisfaction drives increased engagement with American Express products, and that drives shareholder value. Great service is great business.

You can really follow it all the way to shareholder value?

We track it all the way to shareholder value. For a promoter who is positive on American Express, we see a 10% to 15% increase in spending and four to five times increased retention, both of which drive shareholder value. In fact our operating expenses associated with service have gone down because we’re more streamlined, and we limit friction points and errors.

Research shows that most people are far more likely to tell others about a negative experience than a positive one. You want people talking about positive experiences. What’s key to making that happen?

We’ve all become frustrated by the lack of service experience around the world, and in fact when people think of customer service, they tend to think of problems. Customers have regained control because of the proliferation of information at their fingertips, and they benchmark their experience across their lifestyle. It’s no longer enough to be good within your industry; you need to be great across industries. Compounding that is the influence of social media.

That promoter question we ask is actually viral marketing in its finest fashion. In asking it, we’re influencing the customer to influence his friends and family, and that has become exponential with social networks. The power of that has turned this from a cost to an investment in our business.

People don’t feel the same way about service as they did 10 or 15 years ago. What have you observed?

We field a survey annually and found that 7% of consumers feel they’re getting good service; 93% are not getting the service they expect. It’s an enormous void. We defined our business system to respect the fact that these are human beings. We unleash the power of personality and hold our people accountable to key objectives as measured by the voice of the customer. It’s a simple concept. It’s the Golden Rule — treat others as you would like to be treated. But that simplicity is often overlooked by other businesses. Think of the power of the voice of the customer now. Verizon (VZ) introduced a $2 fee, the voice of the customer screamed loud, and it turned that around 24 hours later. We need to appreciate customer-centricity and the value it creates.

You’ve changed how you interact with customers, so your people need new skills. Do you train them differently now?

The training has changed. In the past, 75% of it was on how, technically, you complete the transaction. Now it’s on how you create the relationship and build it through humanity, conversation, and engagement.

As I’ve traveled the world, I’ve always appreciated the people at the front desks of hotels who welcome you in. That hospitality is what we try to deliver through virtual means. So we no longer hire; we select. And by attracting that profile, people come in with the will. We teach them the skill.

Unlike other major card companies, AmEx both issues cards and also receives funds from customers and transfers them to merchants. Does that model give you a service advantage?

Yes. I’ll give you an example that happened recently. I was in a meeting, and a gentleman joined us a bit late. He had lost his composure. I asked what was the matter, and he said, “I’ve never done this before in 35 years in business — I left my overnight bag in the back of the cab.” So I picked up my phone, and our customer care professionals jumped into action. He had used the American Express card to pay the cab fare. We were able to get in touch with the cab company, and he had his bag back in less than an hour. It’s a very powerful demonstration of the power of data, in-the-moment relevance, and the power of what we bring. No other credit card company can deliver on that.

AmEx: Changing call centers one operator at a time

You’re watching the spending of millions of customers globally. What’s the state of the customer today in the U.S. and globally?

We’re seeing cautiously optimistic signsin the U.S. In Europe they’re suffering challenges. As we look at opportunities around the world, cash continues to be our main competitor. We’re seeing that opportunity continue to help us offset some economic instability around the world because people still have the need for nondiscretionary expenditures.

Back in the early days of the recession, we saw the unprecedented phenomenon of the affluent consumer, the American Express customer, cutting back spending more than the middle class. More recently we’ve seen the affluent consumer coming back in a big way. Are you feeling the effects?

We’ve seen it consistently across our business. We’re seeing very strong growth in use of our products, and more important, we’re seeing very positive trends in our credit indicators, indicating the health of our portfolio. But it’s not necessarily in the luxury goods sector. It’s across everything customers buy.

When you got this job, you weren’t sure it was a promotion. How has perception of this function changed?

I was asked to move into this job by Ken Chenault, our chairman. At the time I was thinking the way most people think — that these are back-office operations. But as I thought about the millions of interactions we have with customers, I said, “If we can unleash the power of that customer-facing organization, think of the value we can create.” We developed purpose, and we created energy around that purpose. When you unleash the personality of people to make those connections, the value is significant.

It’s not that we strive to make everyone happy. There’s accountability that goes along with this. Giving our people freedom, boundary, and purpose, combined with holding them accountable, drives economic value.

Do you encounter a lot of misconceptions about the nature of service?

The perception of service is that it’s all about problems. Problems are actually a very small percentage of why customers interact with American Express. What we’ve learned is that the power of that interaction gives us an opportunity to expand the perception of the brand in a very positive way.

There’s a tendency to see service as a sunk cost — the customer is reaching out to you. So people say, “It’s a cost. Let’s look to eliminate it.” And over time we can eliminate friction points, which eliminates the need for some customers to interact with us. But the reality is, it’s a very powerful opportunity to build a relationship.

WIRES AND DANGEROUS BY CHIP BELL, A bronze medal winner of the 2012 Axiom Business Book Awards.

Customers today are picky, fickle, vocal, and “all about me” vain. With the reach and influence of the Internet, they are also powerful. If they receive poor or impersonal service, they talk back—with a single snarky video or damning review gone viral, they can bring down a company. To succeed in this new world, it is vital that customers are treated not as cash machines but as collaborators. Chip Bell and John Patterson analyze this service revolution and provide a tested formula for transforming today’s edgy customers into eager partners. Using real-world examples, they detail compelling methods and pragmatic tools for bringing harmony and balance to a relationship that was out of whack even before the Internet.

click here to learn more about Chip Bell Speaker and Author