The Leadership Caffeine Blog
Leadership Caffeine™—Here’s Where You Should Slow Down to Move Faster
Note from Art: a version of this article appeared originally at SmartBrief on Leadership -- The Need for Speed is Obvious, But Be Careful Few argue over the need for speed when responding and adapting to crisis and rapidly changing circumstances. For a few decades...
Leadership Caffeine™—Here’s Where You Should Slow Down to Move Faster
It’s easy to swallow the dogma that has emerged around the “Cult of Speed” in our management thinking and teaching. Yet, the pursuit of speed in poorly designed systems exposes weaknesses and often precipitates project, strategy, and even organizational failure. Said simply, raw speed kills. Sometimes you have to tap the brakes and slow down to ultimately move faster.
The Leader’s Mid-Week Survival Guide
Hey, it’s Wednesday. How are you doing on your leadership priorities this week?
If you are starting to feel the week slip away from you, here’s a blunt reminder and a few tips to focus on your true priorities. The week’s not over yet…and victory is still within your reach. It’s time to fight off the fires and push away from the urgent-unimportant.
Your Customer Service Tells Me All I Need to Know About Your Management Quality
Of my many quirks, one that I actually enjoy is my unceasing study of customer service. I love to observe customer service interactions and I’ve made it a habit to try and figure out why the good ones are good and the bad ones so miserable. Here are a few thoughts and few light-hearted examples to for managers everywhere to learn from.
Leadership Caffeine™ for the New Week
4 quick-shots of your favorite roast to jolt you into action in this new week. This week’s issue helps you jump start tough conversations, improve project post-mortem meetings, increase your active listening effectiveness and schedule staff meetings that people want to attend. And if you need a double-shot of motivation, visit the Leadership Caffeine category at the Management Excellence site.
Five Tips for Leading Change When You’re Not In Charge
As I continue on my career respite from managing a business that’s not mine, I’m increasingly conscious of the significant gap between the needs and ideas of employees and the attention and interest of senior managers. There are so many remarkable ideas and thoughts on improving performance that never see the light of day that it is staggering. I offer five suggestions for driving change when you’re not in charge. I’m hoping that readers will add a few more of their own.
Your Recruiting Practices Might Just Be Killing Your Business
It’s long past overdue to change the way you recruit talent. The way you’ve been doing it is wrong, and it is hurting your business. This topic is particularly important, because there is a goldmine of talent on the street in this lousy economy. Your opportunity to strengthen your firm with hungry, motivated and powerful people will never be better IF you execute properly.
The Case of the Rapidly Shrinking Attention Span
Are we losing our ability to focus? Maybe. Maybe we never had it, and it is the exception instead of the rule, but it just seems so much harder in this environment to focus on an issue and work through it to creative, complete solutions. We’re too busy racing from one sound-bite opportunity to another, focusing our precious gray matter on topics for nanoseconds before the next interruption comes along.
Podcast: Ten Big Points on Leading and Leadership, part 1 of 2
Join Art for a little less than ten minutes of Management Excellence as he shares points 1 thru 5 of his 10 Big Points on Leading and Leadership. This podcast was based on a recent guest speaking opportunity for a class of college seniors and adapted to fit anyone who...
Leadership Caffeine™ for the New Week: 5 Quick Tips to Jolt You Into Action
Whether you are Chief Executive, a functional manager or someone who leads informally on project and product teams, start your week right and put these suggestions to work. Rinse and repeat in the future. You’ll be glad that you did.
Will this Business Revolutionize How Men Shop and Rescue Me from My 1970’s Fashion Training at the Same Time?
I plan on chronicling my experience in several posts over the next few weeks, with an exciting new men’s clothing/shopping service that I was introduced to called Trunk Club. I’m not sure if I’m more excited about the solution to my fashion challenges, or the fact that this is the best recent example that I’ve seen of a service that so perfectly solves a problem that it practically sells itself.