Art Petty, Author at Management Excellence by Art Petty

About Art Petty

Art Petty is a coach, speaker and workshop presenter focusing on helping professionals and organizations learn to survive and thrive in an era of change. When he is not speaking, Art serves senior executives, business owners and high potential professionals as a coach and strategy advisor. Additionally, Art’s books are widely used in leadership development programs. To learn more or discuss a challenge, contact Art.

Art’s Updates and Coming Attractions

This has been a productive period for my development of new programs and information offerings. While we all write and talk about the impact of great people on our organizations, it is truly palpable when you are on the receiving end of that help. Thanks to two outstanding young professionals, Eric and Amber, that are busy helping and holding me accountable to getting my work done, we’re adding new programs, tuning up prior offerings and extending our line-up of information products.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:37:46-05:00August 14th, 2010|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|0 Comments

Beware the Pull of "Us Versus Them"

’s easy to get caught up in departmental or team squabbles inside of organizations. My advice: stay clear, stay out of it and learn to think and act for yourself.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:37:47-05:00August 13th, 2010|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|2 Comments

The Pursuit of Power and the Misguided Leadership Literature

Jeffrey Pfeffer’s article, Power Play, in the July-August Harvard Business Review (fee) is interesting and relevant for everyone working inside organizations as well as for those individuals actively engaged in the development of leadership literature and course-work. Pfeffer tackles the important topic of power. How to gain it, how to wield it, and in his opinion, why those that actively cultivate power are more effective at driving change and implementing a new strategy. He also suggests that the leadership literature is soft-selling or ignoring this very real and important part of organizational life.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:37:48-05:00August 13th, 2010|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|4 Comments

Leadership Caffeine™: Quit Managing Reduced Expectations

A great friend and talented product manager once offered in a moment of frustration that he viewed his principal job as one of “managing reduced expectations.” This brilliant, but depressing turn of words reflected bigger business problems, including a logjam in development that effectively precluded us from doing anything to enhance the competitiveness of our products in a timeframe shorter than something that you might find on a geologic time-scale. The “managing reduced expectations” seems to be a theme inherent in our society right now, and it is a dangerous mind-set.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:37:50-05:00August 10th, 2010|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|3 Comments

The Kids are Alright-Leadership Lessons from the Youngest Workers

Chances are, we've all read about and heard from mid-career managers complaining about the younger generation entering the workforce. The “don’t want to pay their dues,” and “you can’t pry them away from their PDAs,” and “poor work ethic” laments are in my opinion, lame copouts by managers stuck in their own inflexible ways. There’s good and bad in every generation, it’s just that this one feels different, because it is.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:37:51-05:00August 9th, 2010|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|9 Comments

Show Respect by Paying Attention

There are a million opportunities for us to shortchange conversations in pursuit of the urgent important. It takes discipline and the recognition that your attention as a leader is one of the best ways that you have for conveying your respect for individuals and teams.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:37:52-05:00August 5th, 2010|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|0 Comments

The Career Enhancing Benefits of Message Mapping

Critical and challenging communication situations demand crystal clarity. The discipline of message mapping is a powerful, simple-to-learn approach to helping you and your teams achieve clarity and consistency with your most difficult and strategic communication situations.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:37:53-05:00August 4th, 2010|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|5 Comments

Don’t Spend Too Much Time with the Wrong People

The major “people mistakes” of my career have occurred as a result of investing too much time and effort in trying to change people. As leaders, we can enable change. We can help people that want to change. But trying to change people on our own is ultimately a fool’s errand.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:37:54-05:00August 3rd, 2010|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|0 Comments

Take Responsibility for Your Own Development

In my not inconsiderable experience, too many people in business are in search of the proverbial Silver Bullet. Unfortunately, there are no true silver bullets.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:37:55-05:00August 2nd, 2010|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|2 Comments

Leadership Caffeine™: 4 Signs that Your Leadership Approach is Working

Most leaders struggle to understand whether they are helping or hindering the cause. Except of course for those leaders/narcissists who believe that their every utterance is sheer genius wrapped in pure motivational gold. The feedback from your manager, while important, tends to be based on either numbers or fairly casual observation. And feedback from your team members is welcomed, but you never really know for sure whether it’s the unvarnished type. The “Am I Helping?” issue is particularly important when a troubled team or organization gains a fresh leader. Here are 4 measures that will help you gauge whether you are truly helping or hindering:

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:37:56-05:00August 2nd, 2010|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|5 Comments

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