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
Leadership Caffeine™—Rethinking Your Team’s Business Reviews and Operating Approach
I came across an excellent article by Ron Ashkenas writing at HBR: Big Theatrical Meetings Are a Waste of Time. (tiered subscription model). This is mandatory reading for any manager leading business review sessions. And yes, the article generated a flood of...
Leadership Caffeine™—Rethinking Your Team’s Business Reviews and Operating Approach
While I’ve not attended your business review session, I can tell you with confidence born of experience that most of these events are painful time, productivity, and morale killers. And, in this world where COVID has taught us that quarters are like centuries and the world shifts in hours and days, I increasingly find the ubiquitous quarterly business reviews anachronistic. It’s time to change your team’s operating approach.
The Potentially Profound Implications of Kindle
Amazon’s remarkable second version of their Kindle book reader has some profound implications for all of us. Here’s a “glowing” review and some speculative thoughts on what this device might just mean for a number of industries.
Know Your Mission-More Management Lessons from the Memphis Belle
For this second installment of the business rules that my friend Paul Byrne and I derived from watching the movie the Memphis Belle (see my first installment: Management Lessons from the Memphis Belle-Rule #1), I am departing from the order in which we originally wrote the rules.
Instead, because it is a concept so fundamental to our success in anything we do, I am jumping to Rules 11, 16 and 19, all of which underscore the importance of being totally “mission aware”. Without a sense of our mission, the rest of the rules are meaningless.
Leadership Caffeine™ for the New Week-Expect the Extraordinary
This week’s boost of leadership energy comes straight from one of my early career mentors. This truly exceptional individual practiced leadership according to 5 simple handwritten rules that he kept posted on the wall in his office for everyone to see.
These rules pointed to his True North as a leader, and were the first words that he would read every morning, right after securing his first of many cups of coffee for the day. They read…
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.