The Leadership Caffeine Blog
Breaking Out of a Personal Creativity Slump—Restarting Your Idea Machine
It's a Crisis When My Idea Machine Grinds to a Halt Like many of you, ideas are my stock in trade. Whether writing the next article, designing a new workshop or course, providing strategy advisory services for a client, or supporting my coaching clients, I have to...
Breaking Out of a Personal Creativity Slump—Restarting Your Idea Machine
Like many of you, ideas are my stock in trade. Whether writing the next article, designing a new workshop or course, providing strategy advisory services for a client, or supporting my coaching clients, I have to operate with a well-oiled idea machine. When the idea machine grinds to a halt, I’m in trouble and need to find a fun, engaging, practical approach to restarting it. Here are 14 hacks I use to restart mine:
Just One Thing—Don’t Fall Victim to Doom and Gloom
Instead of falling victim to the psychology of the herd and withdrawing or hunkering down in your business, seize upon the positives and make some of your own good news. Here are 6 tips to help your firm prosper in a period of doom and gloom:
Radical Candor—A Band-Aid for Lack of Accountability
Instead of tacking on what is likely to be a disastrous and potentially personally destructive program that breeds fear in an already dysfunctional workplace environment, make it simpler and teach and expect accountability from yourself and others.
Leadership Caffeine™—Fight to Eliminate Obstacles
Too many firms act as their own worst enemies by sustaining rules and processes that no longer apply and that block the freedom and flexibility of employees and teams to experiment and innovate. Effective leaders and managers work daily to change or eliminate these blockers. Here’s a dose of encouragement and some ideas for you to spark a healthy revolution of change in support of your team:
Art’s Leadership & Management Writing for the Week Ending 1/2/16
Every week I publish posts at the Management Excellence blog (Leadership Caffeine and others) and also at the Management & Leadership site at About.com. Here’s a quick recap list with links:
The Inner Game of Leading and Your New Year’s Resolutions
In a world characterized by change, uncertainty and overload, the context for effective leadership is dramatically different today than a few mere decades ago. Leaders must adapt and importantly, today’s leaders must provide that extra layer of support needed by team members to allow them to work at their best amidst the noise. Annual resolutions aren’t enough. Here are 4 ideas to help you refresh and reset on your leadership role every day:
Leadership Caffeine™—Aligning Your Efforts to Results Ratio
If you’ve ever worked incredibly hard only to have something run off the rails or just not generate the results you were after, you understand what an imbalance in the Efforts-to-Results ratio feels like. Here are some thoughts on aligning this equation in your favor:
Just One Thing—Captain Obvious and The Fresh Start Effect
I’m not certain we needed a research study to prove that we naturally appreciate fresh-starts, nonetheless, now we have one…
Yahoo Misfires—Don’t Let this Happen to Your Firm
Yahoo—a name left over from the boom and bust period of the dot.com world—has somehow managed to limp along in a world where many struggle to understand its value proposition. According to a recent article in Forbes, the exodus of talent and the frustration found in much of the remaining workforce has much to do with the lack of clarity around strategy and direction.
Art of Managing—Avoid Strategy Malpractice with a Proper Diagnosis
If you’ve ever dealt with a complex medical issue, you understand how difficult it sometimes is to identify the real problem. Yet, pinpointing this problem is essential to developing the best possible treatment regimen. It can be a matter of life or death. The same holds true in business, where it’s essential to put time and efforts into developing an effective diagnosis of your firm’s situation: