The Leadership Caffeine Blog
It’s Time to Get Rid of S.M.A.R.T. Goals. Here’s Why & How
Sorry, S.M.A.R.T. Goals, But Your Day is Over OK, a confession: I wanted to title this article something like "Why Your S.M.A.R.T. Goals are Dumb, but my topic is a bit more expansive than just my disdain for that all-too-present and limiting corporate approach to...
It’s Time to Get Rid of S.M.A.R.T. Goals. Here’s Why & How
Goals are critically important in our personal and professional growth. They push us to learn, grow, and strive. We change our lives by aspiring for big goals. We motivate ourselves and our team members with properly developed, challenging goals. And we change the vector and fate of organizations through the proper use of goals. The operative phrase is “the proper use of goals.”
The Next Act—for Later Career Leaders
New and emerging leaders are our future. It’s essential to support their development as they take the reins in our challenging world. They are and will remain the focal point of my content here at Management Excellence. However, there’s an audience whose needs in my opinion are grossly under-served in the career and leadership blogging and writing ecosystem: the later-career (read: over-50) senior leaders and executives. With this post, I’m announcing a new blog feature focused on the needs of this experienced audience.
17 Ways Your Strategy Process Will Fail
Strategy processes mostly disappoint. That’s too bad, because there are few things more essential to an organization’s success and security than getting strategy right. Here are (at least) 17 ways your strategy process will break bad:
New Leader Tuesday—3 Questions to Bring Your Future into Focus
I can tell you with absolute certainty that I didn’t think about my own leadership legacy during the early part of my career. No one does, and that’s often a mistake. Here are 3 provocative questions to help bring your future as a leader into focus:
Leadership Caffeine™—Great Leaders Care
While a leader’s competence is viewed as the most important attribute to engender trust, the fact that he or she genuinely cares about team members is an important number two.
7 Lead-Off Mistakes to Avoid as a First Time Manager
Establishing yourself as a credible and positive leader is important and challenging. Here are some all-too-common missteps of first-time (and even some hapless, experienced) managers. Avoid them in good health!
Leadership Caffeine™—Don’t Back Off Leadership Development in a Crisis
When things break bad (even momentarily) in an organization, a number of predictable reflexes kick-in. Expenses are cut. Operations reviews evolve into extended, public proctology exams with everyone taking a long look searching for answers and blame. Some of the responses are reasonable and expected. Others are destructive. Suspending the work of developing your leaders and managers is destructive. Instead of letting your training budget dictate your team and leadership development efforts, here are 5 high-contact ideas to turbo-charge your efforts:
Study The Top Leader’s Style Before Signing On
If you’re interested in gaining critical insights into how things work in a prospective employer, look to the style, values and priorities of a firm’s top leader.
New Leader Tuesday—Quit Walking on Eggshells around Boss Bullies
Almost every person who’s ever held a managerial position has spent time walking on eggshells around a deliberately difficult employee to avoid inciting a confrontation. I describe these individuals as “Boss Bullies.” They’re particularly fond of first-time managers because their tactics tend to work on the new managers for a period of time. Here are 6 ideas to help you navigate this sticky situation:
Choose to Work in a Culture that Brings Out the Best in You
I’ve worked in cultures like those ascribed to Amazon.com in the recent and controversial New York Times article, “Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace.” These battle-zone firms exists and they can be very successful. And for the adrenaline junkie career climber, these cultures are perfect. For the rest of us, not so much.