The Leadership Caffeine Blog
Gray-Zone Leadership—A Powerful Formula for Career Success
Spend time observing successful individuals in your organization who are visibly succeeding—taking on more responsibilities and gaining access to critical projects, and you will notice three significant themes: 1. Successful individuals learn to make themselves...
Gray-Zone Leadership—A Powerful Formula for Career Success
It turns out, learning to spot and seize gray-zone opportunities is a spectacularly great way to get ahead in your career.
Leadership Caffeine™ for the Week of March 30, 2009
I’m striking a blow this week against Boss-Blame…that world class sport that so many engage in as part of rationalizing why their own results might just be falling short of something resembling excellence. It’s time to engender a new sense of personal and professional accountability in the workplace.
Management Lessons From the Memphis Belle-Rule #1
We were in the early days of our trench warfare trying to save the company, so it was natural that we felt a kinship with the pilot and crew of the Belle. As we drank and watched, we began to discover business rules and management lessons within the war-movie plot. By the time we were done, we had Ten Rules of Management From The Memphis Belle. Then, Paul came up with an 11th. I cussed and said “you can’t just have an odd number like 11” – so we replayed the movie in our heads and thought of 9 more.
And thus we discovered the 20 Lessons From The Memphis Belle. We had them printed up on little cards and handed them out to employees. We gifted them to strategic partners and customers. We printed them on posters and hung them in our offices. When we ran into a hard issue in the business we would refer to the Rules: more often than not there was a rule that was right on point. Each time we’d be amazed, but then we’d say: “Ah! The Rules know all!”
Values in Action-Helping Your Son or Daughter Choose a College
For anyone who has lived through the process of supporting their son or daughter in the search for a college, it is a truly exciting, perplexing and tiring endeavor. It’s also an opportunity to watch values in action at the various institutions as well as with your own child as they wrestle with what is to them a monumental choice.
Leadership Caffeine™ for the Week of March 22, 2009
One of the great things about my view on innovation is that it’s not the sole domain of the engineers, researchers and technologists. My definition of innovation might invite a bit of controversy, but it allows me to extend it to everyone and every function in an organization. There are no boundaries that limit where innovation can take place.
The faster you get people focused on problem-solving and in the mindset of “seizing opportunities,” the more effective you will be at pushing fear out the door in favor of value creating activities. It’s time to push the “GO” button on your innovation machine.
That Seismic Shift You Are About To Hear is Management Revolution
Something’s gone horribly wrong with our pre-established convictions and our comfortable understanding of the old rules of business and management. There was no memo. The new rules are not written in stone anywhere, and in fact they are changing so quickly, that by the time you understand and write them down, they’ve changed yet again. Heck, a good number of firms and leaders never optimized under the old rules, and now look at what they are facing!
It’s time to overthrow the archaic, dysfunctional leadership and management practices of the past!
“It’s Simple” and The Six C’s that Enable High Performance
Sometimes we learn lessons in interesting ways. I learned the power of “keeping things simple” in an amusing but instructive manner from an early mentor at Panasonic. For leaders looking to manage complexity during these difficult times, I offer my own Six Power Tools for keeping things simple and driving high performance.
Leadership Caffeine™ for the Week of March 16, 2009
Your weekly dose of Leadership Caffeine offers reminders and tips for improving communications, engaging your team members and helping knock down obstacles. Oh, and take a second sip of the iced coffee and spend a few minutes thinking about how you might leverage your firm’s values as powerful leadership tools.
Mind Your Knowledge Gap: Why Social Media is Essential to Your Career
This is a wake-up call to my mid to late 30 to 40 something (and older) contemporaries. It’s time to figure out what all the noise is about social media and how to leverage it for yourself, your career and your organization.
What’s Your High Performance Team Experience?
I love to talk with people that have led or been part of a high performance team (HPT). Their enthusiasm is palpable. These individuals have been to the promised land of corporate collaboration and achievement for a brief period in time and they are interested in going back.
Unfortunately, my own formal and informal research indicates that only 30% of professionals surveyed would agree that they have been part of a high performance team. If you’ve been a part of this 30%, the other 70% of your peers would love to hear your story!