The Leadership Caffeine Blog
Leadership Caffeine™—Harnessing the Power of Purpose in Your Work
What Work Should Be Perseverance and Ingenuity—what great names! I'm speaking of the Mars Rover and the small helicopter that hitched a ride all the way to the red planet. After all, it took both perseverance and ingenuity from many over the more significant part of...
Leadership Caffeine™—Harnessing the Power of Purpose in Your Work
If we’re not involved in moon-shots or mars-shots but rather working for seemingly pedestrian causes or offerings, how do we manufacture that sense of purpose? It’s easy, fall in deep love with the people we’re ultimately helping with our work.
Darn It, I Cannot Resist New Year’s Resolutions
While I stand behind my post on Personal Quality Programs as the best way to make improvements in your life, I am a goal-oriented person and resolutions are like a challenge just daring me to achieve. I cannot move through the New Year holiday without organizing my ambitions into a neat little list.
So, What Are We Going to Call This Mess?
Every great disaster needs a name and it’s high time that we got on with naming this one. The sooner we name it, the sooner we can begin to put it in the rear view mirrors of our Toyota Hybrids.
The Last Yard: AT&T’s Failure to Fully Satisfy in Spite of A Competition Killing Product
The Apple iPhone is a great device and our local AT&T Store service is fine. Too bad that AT&T forget to go the last yard for the customer. There are powerful marketing lessons to be learned by observing how a company executes for customers around a category and competition-killing product.
Leader, What Are You Doing to Improve Your Value Creation?
Leadership should be one of the principal value creation components of the management system, yet poor leadership practices often result in increased complexity, added waste and blocked attempts to streamline processes and make improvements that would otherwise benefit the organization and its customers. One of the key reasons that leaders and leadership practices often fail to create value (or to create more value) is the lack of a common operational and actionable definition for the role of a leader.
Merry Christmas!
Peace on Earth. Good Will Towards All.
Effective Leaders Recognize The Power of Collaboration
The best leaders understand their role in creating the effective working environment, and they understand that part of this is creating the conditions for collaboration to take root and grow. On the other hand, ineffective leaders find ways to stifle collaboration, often through managing by fear and intimidation. Negative tactics might drive momentary compliance, but you cannot mandate creativity at the end of a gun barrel.
Sixty Years of Deming and American Managers Forgot to Pay Attention
Dr. Deming indicated that he hoped one of his life’s accomplishments was to keep American companies from committing suicide. The public spectacle of Detroit and Wall Street committing suicide in the same quarter would indicate that he failed in his mission. Deming’s Theory of Profound Knowledge and 14 points offered (and still do) keys to many of the answers. They are not prescriptive, but rather they combine to create a philosophical approach to running a business, that if adhered to, will stand a chance of succeeding for customers, workers and partners on a global stage.
Podcasts, Hamel, Dickens, Time Off and a Holiday Week of Reading
For those of you seeking seasonal reading or looking for some cutting-edge thinking, I’ve got two very different suggestions for you. The first comes from author and consultant Gary Hamel on his management reading recommendations that push the envelope on conventional thinking. The second is a bit more seasonal as author Les Standiford takes a look at how Charles Dickens reinvented his career and changed the way we celebrate Christmas all at the same time.
A Snow Day, Oprah and Finding Your Strengths
My parting observation is that it is absolutely essential for us to explore and develop our skills and talents in our professional lives. Life is precious and preciously short, and it’s a good idea to quit wasting time and start sorting out how to leverage our strengths and talents in our work.