The Leadership Caffeine Blog
Lead Like Lives Depend Upon It—Six Leadership Lessons from Pfizer’s Moon-Shot
I've been a part of an organization that pursued a moon-shot. For myself and the many people involved, it was some of our careers' most challenging and best work. Like a championship from long ago, when the situation pops into my mind, I smile. It was good work with...
Lead Like Lives Depend Upon It—Six Leadership Lessons from Pfizer’s Moon-Shot
What if we led as if lives and livelihoods depended on the outcome? There are some great lessons from the vaccine moon-shot described by Pfizer’s CEO Albert Bourla in the latest issue of Harvard Business Review. It’s time to put these lessons to work in all of our organizations.
Does Your Dashboard of Performance Measurements Include a Warning Light?
In discussions and lectures with the up and coming generation of leaders, there is widespread cynicism over the intentions and the capabilities of many of their firm’s senior leaders. There is little faith expressed that their leaders understand their firm’s key drivers and little confidence that the leaders are taking actions and measuring performance based on anything other than preconceived notions of what they think is right. Fewer organizations than you might think are doing anything to engender employee satisfaction…which is ironic given the mountains of data that indicate that employee satisfaction flows through to customer satisfaction and strong financial performance. This current generation of senior leaders is failing, and the very imbalanced scorecard is visible all around us
Does Your City Government Treat You Like a Customer?
This is my pre-election post on government, and I promise to stay focused on performance and not politics. There’s enough hot air being expended by the candidates and pundits and I don’t need to add to the global warming. However, it does seem like a good time for all of us to evaluate the return we are getting from government and frankly, ask for more. And by more, I don’t mean more money or even more government. I mean quality, performance, results, and yes, even a bit of good old-fashioned customer treatment.
October 29th Carnival of HR (and much more)
Readers interested in some divergent thinking and great ideas should take a look at the menu of authors and content at the latest Carnival of HR. And don’t let the HR headline trick you. This Halloween collection of articles covers diverse topics in leadership, communication, execution, talent development and priceless career advice. Oh, and of course, Dan McCarthy, the host, was nice enough to include my recent attempt to place a quantifiable value on leadership development activities. Check it out, it’s definitely a treat.
In Hopeful Praise of the Millennials
’ll opt for the dissenting view on the Millennials. Where others see management headaches, I see fire, creativity, passion, skill and maybe the capacity to face a world that looks very much the worse for our efforts. Maybe, just maybe, this group will earn the label of The Next Greatest Generation.
I’m encouraged and hopeful.
In Search of a Quantifiable Return on Leadership Development
very few months, I run head-on into a discussion with someone (usually a prospective client) about how to value the return from investments in leadership development. The question is not asked as a means of qualifying my services, but rather as a genuine practitioner-to-practitioner inquiry, not dissimilar to what two MDs might talk about with respect to the latest treatment results for an experimental drug program. The person asking knows as well as I do that Return on Leadership Development continues to be an elusive issue that no one has substantively put to rest, and that our best answers are no stronger than impassioned, qualitative opinions.
Surviving and Prospering Under a Weak Leader
Learning to manage your team leader takes time and requires extraordinary care and handling. Being indecisive and failing to set direction are big shortcomings for a leader, but leaders that carry these attributes are all too common. You and your peers can either let the water-cooler complaints dominate the daily agenda or you can do something about it. Teams and individuals that have leveraged some or all of the suggestions above have reported some nice successes. No complete cures, but some nice successes and sustained progress in the right direction. When your feet are cast in concrete, progress of any kind is good.
Weak Leadership at the Top Derails The Pursuit of Performance Excellence
While some top executives err on the side of asserting a dictatorial style of leadership that poisons the working environment and stifles independent action, in my experience, many more struggle with just the opposite. Instead of overwhelming their associates with strict orders in pursuit of rigid targets, they default on their responsibility to set direction in a poorly constructed attempt to create an environment of empowerment. The results of this approach include endless discussions without resultant actions and massive frustration of well-intended personnel that want to move projects and ideas forward.
Leadership Development: “This is Squishy Feely” Stuff
It’s not uncommon to run into resistance from the senior members of an organization that has just recognized that it might be good to professionalize and improve talent development and acquisition processes. I can even understand the “Squishy Feely” comment coming from a grizzled functional veteran that grew up in a world where the topic of talent identification, development and retention was not as front and center as it increasingly is today. However the statement: “We’re not going to do this,” is impossible to fathom. It’s a lot like saying, “It’s good to be ignorant.” Or, “It’s OK not to breathe.”
Has Your Management Team Decided to Be Successful Yet?
It is always great fun to work with management groups interested in growing their businesses, pursuing a new and bold vision or embarking upon new strategic directions. More often than not, these groups have enjoyed success, established themselves and their firm in a favorable position and have a common excitement about what the future might hold. They also talk about the fact that change will be necessary for growth, and it is usually about this point that the wheels start wobbling.