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.”
Leadership Caffeine—Becoming Agile and Adaptable is THE Leadership Issue
The Leadership Caffeine™ series is intended to make you think and act. -- What if everything that used to work for your business no longer did? The business challenge of this era for long established firms is much about escaping the powerful pull of the past....
Ideas for Professional Growth: Week of June 7, 2015
Every week, I provide a few simple (but not simplistic) ideas for you to Do/Experiment/Explore in support of your professional development. Use them in great professional health and personal gain. Here are the ideas for the week June 7, 2015:
Just One Thing—Hug a Project Manager
One of the core takeaways my MBA students express after investing 10 weeks immersed in the art and science of this discipline is new found appreciation for the role project managers play in our organizations.
Art of Managing—Humility, Teamwork and Focus
(Note: this post by Art Petty originally appeared at the Management Excellence blog.) In a sea of books and articles published regularly on navigating complexity in our world today, few capture the solution as succinctly as the three words: humility, teamwork and focus. One defines the attitude required for success from the top to the bottom; one defines the essential obligation of each and every individual engaged in any initiative and the other describes the need for context or common purpose. Misfire on one or more of these and the results range from poor to disastrous.
Leadership Caffeine™—Ask, “How Can I Help?”
One of the more powerful leadership learning moments in my career occurred when I was part of project team that was struggling to find traction around an important and complicated strategic initiative… . (note: this post by Art Petty originally appeared at The Management Excellence blog.)
MBA Class of 2015—It’s Time to Rededicate to Learning
(This post originally appeared at the Management Excellence Blog by Art Petty.) Every year I offer my heartfelt encouragement to the many newly minted MBA students leaving their classrooms and cohorts behind at graduation. In prior years, my “Congratulations! Now What?” post was intended to offer some transition guidance for leveraging the degree. For this year, I’m emphasizing the need for new graduates to retain their hunger for learning and shift their efforts to regular and far-reaching exploration of the ideas changing our world.
Just One Thing—Push Beyond “M” for Mediocrity
(Note: this post originally appeared at the Management Excellence blog, copyright 2015 Art Petty.) Why do we fail with our initiatives (projects, strategy, leadership) in the workplace so regularly when the causes of failure are well documented and the practices to minimize the chances of failure so well identified?
Art of Managing—Thriving at the Speed of Change
(Note: this post originally appeared at the Management Excellence blog. Copyright 2015 by Art Petty.) My one disappointment with much of the current business writing about change is that it is short on the “what to do about it,” content, in part because the notion of all this change makes for fascinating reading, and in part, because it’s not clear what exactly we should be doing in many cases. Here are 5 big starter ideas to help you and your team learn to thrive in this new world of uncertainty and ambiguity:
Leadership Caffeine™—Letting Go of Your Need to Be the Smartest Person in the Room
(Note: This post first appeared at the Management Excellence blog https://artpetty.com/blog/ by Art Petty. Copyright 2015 Art Petty.) One of the most common and damaging of a leader’s blind-spots is the compulsion to regularly provide evidence that he/she is the smartest person in the room. Here are some helpful suggestions to recognize and combat your own or your boss’s “smartest person” tendencies: