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This Land of Strangers - Robert E Hall

This Land of Strangers

"..the most important book of the decade." — Richard Boyatzis, co-author of best seller Primal Leadership

Relationships, in all their varied forms, have been the lifetime study of Robert Hall. He brings a rare combination of experience as a researcher, consultant, writer, teacher and CEO in dealing with the real-world relationship challenges of modern organizations. When coupled with a decade of hands-on experience in the gritty world of inner-city homeless families it translates into a tapestry of vivid stories, well-researched and oft startling facts, and strategic insights that weave together the yet untold narrative of society's gravest risk and most stellar opportunity.

Blog & Articles

Robert has published more than 150 columns, articles, white papers, and research studies on relationship. In addition to being a regular contributor at Huffington Post, his work has been published and discussed in Forbes, American Banker, Sales & Marketing Management magazine, The CEO Magazine, ABA Bank Marketing magazine, Computerworld, The Daily Beast, Business Week, The Dallas Morning News, Los Angeles Times, The Detroit News, The Indianapolis Star and in international publications including Sydney Morning News (Australia), European Financial Management Association (London) and Relational Thinking Network (Cambridge, UK).

The Truth Shall Set Us Free – But First it Will Make Us Miserable

What we had in the 30’s was a healthy society sitting on a sick economy. What we have now [in the 1990’s] is a sick society sitting on a healthy economy. – Peter Drucker

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What we have now is a sick society sitting on a sick economy. That is awfully negative, but I am simply saying what many feel. As we draw near the end of the first decade of the 21st century, the look-back is a little confronting. Even a […]

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Article

That Was Then and This Is Now: Efficiently Rebuilding Relationships and Revenue

American firms are starting to bring call centers back to the U.S. – NPR August 25, 2010

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Part of what makes business so interesting and humbling is how often yesterday’s breakthrough is today’s breakdown. The story of success always has a next chapter where the players, the strategy and the execution have to address changing markets, competitors, technology and the like to compete and succeed. One of the driving forces for business over the past decade was cost reduction and […]

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Article

Bags and Relationships Fly Free

“Southwest has grabbed nearly $1 billion in annual market share – thanks in large part to people avoiding bag fees.” – Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly

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Don’t you just love it when a company lives up to its brand? When you truly know who you are the marketplace, competitors, and events sooner or later will provide special windows to reveal and reaffirm your identity. Southwest Airlines recently discerned just such an opening. Yet as is often the case, it would […]

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Article

Restoring the Brand for Those in the Money Business

“(T)he purpose of free enterprise is human flourishing, not materialism.” – Arthur C. Brooks, “America’s New Culture War,” The Washington Post, May 23, 2010

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I don’t ever remember money being so controversial. We question if the euro will sustain as a viable currency. We worry Greece is going to run out of money and that California already has. Many are concerned that the federal government is borrowing more than we can ever repay. Corporations and especially banks are under attack […]

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Article

Professional vs Relational: The Cost of a Smile

“In Manhattan, people with kids have nannies. In Queens, we have grandparents.” — Joel Kotkin, quoting a real estate agent, All in the Family, Forbes April 13, 2010

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The hurried trip to the airport was followed by a race to the ticket counter. I mentioned to the agent that we had booked on very short notice – that we had a bit of an emergency. Without expression or looking up from his screen the agent asked, “What kind of […]

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Article

Customers and Employees: The Power of Knowing Their Stories

Kids who knew their family history had higher self-esteem and fewer emotional problems, such as depression. – Robyn Fivush, psychology professor, Emory University, citing a two-year study.

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I received a call from a man about leasing some property that has been in my family. I had never met him, but he mentioned how he had admired my mom in some lease dealings he had with her after my dad passed away. Afterward, I got to thinking about how this small detail […]

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Article

Personalizing Relationships: Designing for Productivity, the Brand and Revenue

… employees who know how their work has a meaningful, positive impact on others are not just happier than those who don’t; they are vastly more productive, too. – Adam Grant, Management Professor, Wharton

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Over the past 25 years, the effort to design more productive organizations has been dominated by the math of task efficiency that has mostly ignored the math of relational engagement and effectiveness. The race to scale by creating larger, more specialized, centralized functions has moved much […]

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Article

Big Bank Blowback: Religious and Political Fervor for Small and Local

Religious leaders and pastors from around the country called to say that they, too, were ready to take their money out of the big banks … and instead invest according to their values, by putting money into more local and community-based institutions. – Reverend Jim Wallis, advocate for Move Your Money, Washington Post January 3, 2010

• • •

Big government, big business, big unions, big banks – big trouble. In recent weeks we have seen a new chapter unfold – a […]

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Article

The Bad News About Efficiency

Chasing GDP growth results in lower living standards … GDP may be a poor measure of well-being, or even of market activity. – Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Laureate in Economics, Sept. 13, 2009

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I zipped down the toll road that I have traveled so often. Where the old toll booths used to stand in the southbound lanes, six across, there was only an overhead camera and scanning device. At 70 miles per hour there was no need to even tap the […]

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Article

Subprime Leadership

We have come to realize that the economic crisis was less a matter of subprime mortgages than subprime leadership. – Bill George, Harvard Business School

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Our recent economic travails set me to thinking about the learnings from this difficult period that will prepare better leaders for the future. Times of crisis can be deadly, but there’s nothing like navigating through adversity to forge the skills of leadership.

There is certainly plenty of room for improvement. According to the National Leadership […]

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