The Leadership Caffeine Blog
Leadership Caffeine™—Lessons for Transformation Learned in the Northwoods
Every spring, my wife and I kick off a big project on the grounds of our Northwoods lake property. We focus on areas of need, including dealing with erosion, reintroducing native plants, and protecting against or recovering from various tree diseases. Along the way,...
Leadership Caffeine™—Lessons for Transformation Learned in the Northwoods
Our organization changes don’t feel like the work of transforming a shoreline or beach, but maybe they should. Imagine if the transformation team members viewed themselves as stewards of the environment and not experts playing with boxes on an organization chart in pursuit of trivial outcomes. I suspect more of those initiatives would succeed.
Art’s Weekly Leadership Message: It’s All in Your Attitude
Of the many things we can’t control in life and business, attitude is the one we have 100 percent power over, every single day. The best leaders know this, and they work to prepare theirs before walking through the door or engaging in the workplace.
Steve Jobs-Walking With Giants
Twentieth Century Industrialist and the founder of Panasonic, Konosuke Matsushita, established a garden outside of the firm's modest headquarters in Osaka, Japan. In this garden, he commissioned and placed statues of his heroes. Fittingly, a giant statue of Thomas...
Escaping the Gravitational Pull of the Past
If you work in a firm struggling to redefine itself and maintain its relevance in this changing world, you’re not alone. You’re also involved in a battle for your firm’s life.
Book Launch and an Offer: Let’s Get the Conversations Started!
The rolling launch of Leadership Caffeine-Ideas to Energize Your Professional Development continues, and I’m interested in talking to readers and their teams about all things leadership. I’ve got an offer for you to help jump-start the right conversations with your team:
Leadership Caffeine™ Podcast #9: Business Improv with Val Gee and Sarah Gee
Creativity is at a premium in our world, and subjecting our teams and audiences to mind and rear-numbing marches through an endless stream of slides is the best way I know to stifle creativity. There’s got to be a better way!
Val Gee and Sarah Gee in their recent book, Business Improv, offer both hope and some practical solutions to the aforementioned painful march through training sessions and internal meetings. Blending experiential learning and the improvisation activities practiced in the world of theater, Val and Sarah have created a wonderful collection of activities designed to both get people engaged and help them overcome the many obstacles and barriers that get in the way of creative and problem-solving discussions.
Art’s Weekly Leadership Message-9 Credibility Builders to Lead By
If you’re responsible for getting work done through others, you will be as effective as you are credible. Of course, those of us working for you take our time in assessing your words, actions and motives before we deem you credible as our leader. While a leader’s credibility is a qualitative assessment of the individual’s character, there are a number of good habits that anyone in a supervisory or management position can apply daily on their road to building credibility and growing as a leader. Here are 9 Credibility Builders that will serve you well:
New Book from Art-Incoming!
While both the paperback and Kindle versions of my newest work, Leadership Caffeine-Ideas to Energize Your Professional Development, have been available on Amazon for a few days, I’ve not yet pulled the trigger on a public launch. In fact, when talking to my marketing manager, I suggested that instead of a launch as an event, I would much prefer a rolling launch.
Midweek Marketing: Delta Builds Customer Experience One Detail at a Time
I’ve been an unapologetic critic of the money losing and seemingly customer hating airline industry for many years. Anyone who has flown a million miles or more has a good view to the workings of this flying bus business (with apologies to bus companies), and the view is mostly unpleasant. (Not always, just mostly.) Imagine my surprise when I deviated on my return trip from my normal dealings with United, and flew Delta, and I actually enjoyed the experience. I checked my calendar and it wasn’t April Fools Day or Halloween, so all of the truly good natured, helpful and smiling Delta employees might have actually meant it. Here are 7 observations and some lessons for all of us worth sharing:
Art’s Weekly Leadership Message-Hey Boss: Less Talking, More Listening
It’s amazing what you hear if you exert a little self-control, clamp your jaw shut and focus on trying to understand what your employees and team members are trying to tell you. You learn about what’s working, what’s not, where you need to step up and offer help, where you need to step in and deliver feedback and so much more.