Wake-Up Calls for Managers
For the hard parts no one prepares you for
When the path isn’t clear, the stakes are high, and the answers aren’t obvious—this is where managers struggle most.
Wake-Up Calls for Managers delivers practical, real-world guidance for navigating:
- Tough conversations
- Leading through uncertainty
- Building influence without authority
- Driving results through others
The Leadership Caffeine Blog
Free Mini-Course/Webinar: How to Get Unstuck & Take Control of Your Career
If a career pivot is on your mind and you want some hard-earned guidance for jump-starting the process, join me on 7/21 at noon central for: How to Get Unstuck & Take Control of Your Career! I'll share guidance gained from years of coaching career reinventors...
Free Mini-Course/Webinar: How to Get Unstuck & Take Control of Your Career
If a career pivot is on your mind and you want some hard-earned guidance for jump-starting the process, join me on 7/21 at noon central for: How to Get Unstuck & Take Control of Your Career!
From Strategic Planning to Strategic Conversations
While there is no doubt that strategic planning done right is a valuable management process and tool, in my opinion, we need to change both the vernacular and the approaches to move from strategic planning to conducting strategic conversations. Frankly, I want everyone in my firm thinking, talking and relating their work activities to the firm’s strategies for creating customer value and thumping competitors.
The April 15th Carnival of HR (It’s all about Talent!)
Thanks to the great team at the Maximize Possibility blog, the April 15th Carnival includes a fantastic collection of posts from some of the leading minds in talent. Oh, and it even includes one of mine!
Dumb Luck and Employee Happiness-One Works and the Other Doesn’t?
Every once in awhile, my second favorite publication, Harvard Business Review, serves up some fascinating content that leaves me scratching my head and wondering. In addition to some excellent content, the April, 2009 issue summarizes a couple of potentially pointless studies in the Forethought section.
One asks: “Are Great Companies Just Lucky?” and the other serves up, “Employee Happiness Isn’t Enough to Satisfy Customers.”
Both articles offer up some interesting premises and are backed by well-pedigreed professionals that seem to have conducted a fair amount of research to conclude that luck is important and employee happiness is not the silver bullet of customer satisfaction.
My reactions range from, “OK, and the point is…?” to “Huh?”
Leadership Caffeine™ for the New Week: Creating Time to Get Stuff Done
A number of my last few posts have focused on thinking big, and a wise reader pointed out that with all of the dreaming and visioning he has been doing at my bequest, he’s falling hopelessly behind in his work.
Fair point, so grab a cup of something hot, along with a pen and paper, and don’t get too comfortable. After all, who has time to read blog posts all day, when there’s work to be done! This one’s short and sweet!
In my opinion, there’s still no substitute for the A, B, C list. It doesn’t matter if you create it on your p.c., on a notepad or on your iphone, just create one and use it to guide where you focus your time. The key is in establishing the proper criteria for prioritizing your tasks.
Help Wanted: Visionaries and Dreamers-Safe Return Doubtful
While it has never been substantiated that the explorer and leader Ernest Shackleton actually placed this ad, these few short sentences have taken on a life of their own. They read:
“Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honor and recognition in case of success.”
There are those in this world that run towards these types of opportunities and others that run away as fast as they can. I’ve always been inspired by individuals that look beyond the here and now and issues of the moment to see and seize the opportunity to do something great.
Detoxing Your Team
Most of us can recall working with someone that had such a strong, negative impact on the work environment that you could literally feel the emotional mood swing when this person walked into a meeting.
For some unknown reason, perhaps a karmic-imbalance in the universe, these toxic characters have the unnerving and disconcerting tendency to be great survivors. While it is easy to intuit that toxic employees are value destroyers, we’ve been short on hard data about the true impact that these individuals have on the work environment. Until now.
Dream and Act Big: Leadership Caffeine™ for the Week of April 5, 2009
This week’s jolt of energy is taken from a great interview with Jim Collins in the April, 2009 issue of Inc. Magazine. Collins connected with Inc. editor, Bo Burlingham to share views on the state of our world, building great businesses and entrepreneurship.
The entrepreneurial focus is relevant for many that have either been pushed into this world through downsizing or are considering it as they grow weary of the uncertainties of corporate life. And whether you are a budding entrepreneur or not, the insights, guidance and reminder to dream and act big are appropriate and inspirational.
Develop Culture Sensing Skills and Take the Blinders Off Of Your Career
One of my greatest career misfires was accepting a role in a firm where I had failed to properly assess the culture. I was blinded by the allure of this successful and global firm and by the sharp people that I met during the interview process.
I can think of few skills more important for professionals, product and project managers and other lateral leaders to develop than culture sensing. All of the functional or vocational expertise in the world is for naught if the individual fails to take into account and leverage cultural idiosyncrasies to achieve results and drive performance improvements.
New Leaders, Twitter and the Volunteer Management Conundrum
The Top Ten Challenges of the New Leader, an update on my experience with Twitter (and why all marketers should join), and the Volunteer Management conundrum in our communities that we are capable of solving. Oh, and three developmental suggestions for your professional “To Do” list.