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
Revisiting the Connection Between Physical Transformation and Career Reinvention
There’s no separating the cascading benefits from working on both your fitness and your career at the same time. As I was talking with a member of the current Career Reinvent Boot Camp cohort the other evening, he remarked how during the month or so he’s been working...
Revisiting the Connection Between Physical Transformation and Career Reinvention
There’s no separating the cascading benefits from working on both your fitness and your career at the same time. The physical transformation feeds the career reinvention and vice-versa.
Managing Your Boss and Death to Slogans: Weekend Reading
Grab a cup of something hot and enjoy these two quick-reads. Patrick Lencioni offers good advice for managing upwards and Dan and Chip Heath skewer the slogan writers.
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.