The Leadership Caffeine Blog
Leadership Caffeine™—The Imperative to Think Differently About Managing and Leading
Now is not the time for the dominant logic surrounding managing and leading to prevail. That's how we got here, and "here" isn't so great. It's time to break and replace the old rules of managing and leading. It's essential we find better ways to inspire, motivate,...
Leadership Caffeine™—The Imperative to Think Differently About Managing and Leading
Now is not the time for the dominant logic surrounding managing and leading to prevail. That’s how we got here, and “here” isn’t so great. It’s essential we find better ways to inspire, motivate, and engage great people who want to make a difference in our organizations. Here are twelve places to start:
Jumpstart Your Marketing Reading to Retrain Your Brain
In my opinion, there’s never been a better time to get involved in the field of marketing. The advances in technology, the spread of social media and the incredible need that organizations everywhere have for individuals that get that marketing is a philosophy…a way of thinking and acting, and not a department, has never been greater.
Leadership Caffeine™: 8 Ideas for Remaining Personally Strong as a Leader
The paternal twins, Arrogance and Laziness are experts at biding their time and waiting for an opening to slip into your leadership party. Constant vigilance is the only way to keep these destructive gatecrashers from moving in and taking up residence as permanent parts of your leadership style.
Leadership Caffeine™: 7 Signs that Monotony and Routine Have Taken Over
Let’s face it, there’s much about the world of work for many that is monotonous or at least fairly routine. It’s easy in many roles to get lulled into the rhythms and routines of days, weeks and months. Wake-up, dress, get on the train, drink coffee, meet, talk, write, plan, meet some more and run to catch the express train home. Rinse and repeat. Monotony and routine are the natural born killers of creativity and innovation. Like weeds invading a spring lawn here in the Midwest, these twin killers quickly overwhelm the healthy pursuit of better, new and different.
It Takes Time and Experience to Find Your Leadership Voice
As an early career leader, you have little depth or breadth in your leadership voice. You struggle or at least strive to be relevant to your team members and your organization, and many flail in the process. Over time as you gain experience, learn and build confidence, a complex leadership personality begins to emerge. This is what those around you will take as your style, but you know that it is much more than an outward fashion statement. It’s who you are as a person that also happens to serve as a leader.
Leadership Caffeine™: 7 Odd Ideas to Help You Get Unstuck
While some argue that the natural order of life is towards entropy (a gradual decline into disorder), I would argue that the natural tendency of most humans is towards a kind of comfortable sameness and consistency in their daily lives. The pursuit of different requires more energy than the descent into routine. It is most definitely easier to not change. While comfortable and comforting, routine is the enemy of growth and progress and innovation
7 Ideas to Stimulate Experimentation in Your Organization
In some organizations, there are so many systemic and cultural disincentives to experimentation that it’s a wonder that executives and employees are able to decide what to have for lunch today that was different from yesterday. In spite of the natural inertia towards the sure thing or the shortcut (external advice in lieu of more risky and time-consuming experimentation), I’ll offer my few cents worth on why and how you and your firm can use experimentation as a means of building value and confounding competitors.
Leadership Caffeine™-Teach Your Team to Make Better Decisions
If you were to embark upon a rugged and lonely journey to the top of the mountain to ask for enlightenment from the Oracle of Management, I suspect that you would be left with the words “decision-making” to ponder on your long walk back to civilization. And in spite of the lack of a concrete answer from this journey, I’ll throw in my two-cents worth that decision-making is in fact the essence of management. It’s also darned hard to do, difficult to teach and challenging to get right more often than not.
Growing Up Globally Aware in America-A Key to Your Children’s Future Success
As if parenting isn’t challenging enough for most of us, there’s another task to add to a list that doesn’t seem to lack for things to do. This one may require foregoing a few soccer games, conducting some more of those “talks” and putting the effort forth to create new educational opportunities and family experiences. I’m talking about ensuring that our future generations of leaders grow up globally aware and highly familiar with the rich and complicated level of diversity, customs, practices and subtle and significant variations across cultures, countries and religions.
Make Meaning as a Leader
The best leaders that I know are driven by an internal belief and desire to create something good and significant through their leadership efforts. They are egotistical enough to understand that they want to pursue greatness in some terms, and they are humble enough to know that none of this is about them, but rather it is for and with and by others that this something can be achieved.