Three Keys to Creating High-Performance Teams in Virtual or Live Settings

Anyone who has been on a team they might reasonably describe as "high-performance" understands how rare these experiences are in the workplace. Add in the challenges of groups new to virtual collaboration, and the potential for underwhelming outcomes rises considerably. However, with a few essential adjustments, the team leader and members can counteract the team development challenges and live to prosper together.

Leadership Caffeine—Becoming Agile and Adaptable is THE Leadership Issue

The Leadership Caffeine™ series is intended to make you think and act. -- What if everything that used to work for your business no longer did? The business challenge of this era for long established firms is much about escaping the powerful pull of the past. Approaches that worked so well for so long are [...]

The Triple Threat to Good Decisions: Data, Time and Emotion

There are few situations more challenging to teams than dealing with a tough, emotionally-charged issue and decision-choice while facing significant time pressure and seemingly contradictory data. If that type of situation sounds uncommon or unrealistic, consider that many firms and management teams make critical priority calls and strategic choices under just such circumstances. The decision to launch Challenger was a prime example, with all three factors playing a huge role in this tragic call. Countless corporate strategic misfires owe their outcome to this triple-threat of data, time and emotion. While many situations don’t involve life-safety issues, this triple-threat is something that every manager should be critically sensitive to in their group and strategic decision-making.

By |2016-10-22T17:11:50-05:00July 22nd, 2010|Decision-Making, Leadership, Strategy|8 Comments

Leadership Caffeine™: 6 Ideas to Improve Team Performance Today

If your organization is like most, you’re leaving money on the table in terms of team productivity and performance. Social and interpersonal factors, motivation issues, lack of group cohesion and the general up-front churn that teams display as they form, are just a few of the areas where you can pick up immediate productivity improvements with a little bit of smart leadership.

By |2016-10-22T17:11:50-05:00July 19th, 2010|Leadership, Leadership Caffeine|2 Comments

7 Signs that Your Leadership Approach is Working

The best leaders are critically aware of their role and power in shaping the environment on their teams and inside their organizations. They are also aware that almost no one will ever provide the boss honest, actionable feedback on performance. I encourage leaders to develop an extreme awareness of what is going on around them as the best indicator of their effectiveness.

By |2016-10-22T17:11:51-05:00June 21st, 2010|Leadership|0 Comments

The Problem(s) with Teams

It’s increasingly likely that you will spend a good deal of your professional time working on temporary teams. It’s also likely that you will experience a fair amount of frustration and even team failure along the way. Most organizations have yet to meet a problem (or opportunity) that they won’t throw a team at to solve. Let’s face it, it’s tempting to assume that a group of motivated, diverse individuals will trump the lone soldier when it comes to creativity, problem-solving and planning. Or, at least it’s comfortable to think so.

By |2016-10-22T17:11:52-05:00May 28th, 2010|Career, Leadership, Project Management|5 Comments

Surviving and Prospering Under a Weak Leader

Learning to manage your team leader takes time and requires extraordinary care and handling. Being indecisive and failing to set direction are big shortcomings for a leader, but leaders that carry these attributes are all too common. You and your peers can either let the water-cooler complaints dominate the daily agenda or you can do something about it. Teams and individuals that have leveraged some or all of the suggestions above have reported some nice successes. No complete cures, but some nice successes and sustained progress in the right direction. When your feet are cast in concrete, progress of any kind is good.

By |2016-10-22T17:12:19-05:00October 21st, 2008|Decision-Making, Leadership, Leading Change|0 Comments

In Search of the High Performance Project Team

If the informal survey results above are even remotely close to reality, many/most people have not had the experience to participate on a high performance project team. While successfully managing projects is a tough task, I do not believe that we are dealing with a degree of impossibility. If project success is critical to your organization's advancement, everyone from the CEO on down has a vested interest in ensuring that greater than 10% of the project teams take on the characteristics of a high-performance environment.

By |2016-10-22T17:12:24-05:00May 18th, 2008|Leadership, Project Management|0 Comments

Want to Change? Manage Strategy in Bursts!

Organizations that learn to work in “Strategy Bursts” are able to learn, adapt and refine their strategic activities faster than more plodding competitors, but this new style requires learning and internalizing a new approach to strategy management and execution. For many leaders and executives, succeeding with this new model requires letting go of old strategy habits and biases.

By |2016-10-22T17:12:27-05:00March 20th, 2008|Leadership, Project Management, Strategy|1 Comment
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