The Leadership Caffeine Blog
Leadership Caffeine™—Focus on Purpose and Principles, Not Tips and Hacks
We’re wired in this era to look for tips, hacks, and cheat codes, particularly for complex challenges. Who doesn’t want a shortcut that delivers the goods? Yet, some challenges don’t lend themselves to shortcuts. Take managing and leading effectively as cases in...
Leadership Caffeine™—Focus on Purpose and Principles, Not Tips and Hacks
We’re wired in this era to look for tips, hacks, and cheat codes, particularly for complex challenges. Who doesn’t want a shortcut that delivers the goods? Yet, some challenges don’t lend themselves to shortcuts. Take managing and leading effectively as cases in point.
Don’t Expect Easy-My Top 15 Suggestions for Coping as a Professional
“Easy” is not a term that should be on your mind, except when it comes to improving the experience for your customers. Outside of making life easier for your customers, there are few circumstances where “easy” shows up or where you are justified in expecting things to go that way. Here are my Top 15 Suggestions for Coping as a Professional.
Management Excellence Book Series Kicks Off Featuring Good Boss, Bad Boss
Welcome to the first post and first interview for the Management Excellence Book Series, where I feature Bob Sutton, New York Times best-selling author and author of the forthcoming book Good Boss, Bad Boss. I had the great fortune to connect with Bob recently on a phone call/interview, and our scheduled 10-15 minutes turned into 30 minutes of fascinating insights about the book, and about Bob’s work as a professor and consultant. He was a delight to interview and I sincerely believe that you will find his insights and anecdotes as fascinating as I did. Enjoy the interview and enjoy the book!
Leadership Caffeine™: 5 Ideas for Infusing Fun Into the Workplace
You heard it here first. It’s OK to Have Some Fun as a Leader. Most of the popular press on leading and leadership focuses on the challenges, strain and pains of leading, leaving one to assume that signing on for the role is akin to a vow of chastity or at least a vow of silence. Here are 5 ideas for safely infusing more fun into your workplace. The increase in performance might just surprise you.
Art’s Updates and Coming Attractions
This has been a productive period for my development of new programs and information offerings. While we all write and talk about the impact of great people on our organizations, it is truly palpable when you are on the receiving end of that help. Thanks to two outstanding young professionals, Eric and Amber, that are busy helping and holding me accountable to getting my work done, we’re adding new programs, tuning up prior offerings and extending our line-up of information products.
Beware the Pull of "Us Versus Them"
’s easy to get caught up in departmental or team squabbles inside of organizations. My advice: stay clear, stay out of it and learn to think and act for yourself.
The Pursuit of Power and the Misguided Leadership Literature
Jeffrey Pfeffer’s article, Power Play, in the July-August Harvard Business Review (fee) is interesting and relevant for everyone working inside organizations as well as for those individuals actively engaged in the development of leadership literature and course-work. Pfeffer tackles the important topic of power. How to gain it, how to wield it, and in his opinion, why those that actively cultivate power are more effective at driving change and implementing a new strategy. He also suggests that the leadership literature is soft-selling or ignoring this very real and important part of organizational life.
Leadership Caffeine™: Quit Managing Reduced Expectations
A great friend and talented product manager once offered in a moment of frustration that he viewed his principal job as one of “managing reduced expectations.” This brilliant, but depressing turn of words reflected bigger business problems, including a logjam in development that effectively precluded us from doing anything to enhance the competitiveness of our products in a timeframe shorter than something that you might find on a geologic time-scale. The “managing reduced expectations” seems to be a theme inherent in our society right now, and it is a dangerous mind-set.
The Kids are Alright-Leadership Lessons from the Youngest Workers
Chances are, we’ve all read about and heard from mid-career managers complaining about the younger generation entering the workforce. The “don’t want to pay their dues,” and “you can’t pry them away from their PDAs,” and “poor work ethic” laments are in my opinion, lame copouts by managers stuck in their own inflexible ways. There’s good and bad in every generation, it’s just that this one feels different, because it is.
Show Respect by Paying Attention
There are a million opportunities for us to shortchange conversations in pursuit of the urgent important. It takes discipline and the recognition that your attention as a leader is one of the best ways that you have for conveying your respect for individuals and teams.