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.
This Marine Fights-Life and Leadership Lessons from a Family Hero
I’ve learned much from Bob, but perhaps the most important reminder that he serves up is for us all to touch everyone that we come in contact with in a positive way. And while much of this blog focuses on dealing with the tough issues of leading and managing, even the tough issues offer opportunities for positive touches.
Leadership Caffeine™: Teach, Don’t Tell
I discovered a long time ago that I was much more effective as a leader and as a father (a much harder job to get right!) if I adopted an approach that emphasized teaching over telling. While there are circumstances where telling is appropriate…the battlefield, the operating room, perhaps the football field and a few others that I’m sure that I would think of if given enough time, most people prefer to learn, not to carry out orders.
Personal Responsibility and Success: Quit Shooting Yourself in the Foot!
I’ve been harping on personal responsibility at least once per week recently, and can’t quite get it out of my system. I’m bombarded daily with too many examples of people that fail to take responsibility for their actions and in the process, often stop one step short of success. One of my as yet unresolved points of personal inquiry (and wonder), involves those individuals in businesses and in graduate and undergraduate classes that are seemingly armed with their fair share of intellectual gifts and raw capabilities, but that still manage to metaphorically shoot themselves in one or both feet with alarming regularity.
Embrace Ambiguity and Grow With It
Many people fear ambiguity and/or they don’t trust their own ability to create or solve a problem, so they respond with a question that delegates the thinking to someone else. That’s a bad habit, and if the workplace or college classrooms were refereed events, those “you do my thinking for me so I don’t have to be creative or take a risk” questions would be infractions.
Leadership Caffeine™: It’s Vuja De All Over Again
I’m re-reading Tom Kelley’s outstanding book, “The Ten Faces of Innovation,” based on his experience with design firm IDEO, and came across his wonderful use of the phrase Vuja De (the opposite of that feeling we call Déjà vu) in the chapter on acting as an anthropologist to observe people’s true behavior. With apologies to Yogi Berra for borrowing and twisting his classic phrase, “It’s Deja Vu all over again,” a little Vuja De in your daily leadership life might just be the prescription to turbocharge team and individual performance.
Suddenly, Deming is Relevant Again
In my opinion, Deming has never been irrelevant as a management philosopher, teacher and advisor, but our fast-moving, idol-for-a-minute, fad-crazed modern culture, we’re quick to write off those thinkers and doers from prior eras as yesterday’s relics…interesting perhaps, but irrelevant.
The New Employer-Employee Loyalty Prescription
The term and concept of “loyalty” is one that is frequently bandied about in phrases that sound much like, “there is no longer any loyalty to workers,” and “few workers admit any feelings of loyalty to their employers.” The term is also used to contrast today’s transactional workplace relationships with the supposed near utopian state of yesteryear, when our parents and grandparents started at one company early in their lives and ended up retiring from that company 40 years later. The concept of “loyalty” in the workplace is in need of a makeover, complete with a new definition and fresh examples of what constitute reasonable and professional levels of loyalty for and from all parties.
Leadership Caffeine™: Be Careful How You Value Your Time-15 Minutes Can Make a Big Difference
As leaders, we all know that it’s the little things that count. A word of encouragement might just be rocket fuel for one person while a constructive suggestion serves as the same for another. Alternatively, ignoring or paying superficial attention to a topic that an employee deems important is a guaranteed way to demoralize and deflate a person.
February Leadership Development Carnival
Thanks to Mark Bennett and the great people at Talented Apps for hosting the February, 2010 Leadership Development Carnival. Take a stroll through the Carnevale di Venezia Edition (you’ll have to click over to understand the creative tie-in to the Carnival in Venice) and check out some truly intriguing, inspiring and compelling posts from bloggers old and new. OK, instead of old, perhaps I should say familiar!