The Leadership Caffeine Blog
Leadership Caffeine™—A One Line Job Description for Managers
What's the Best Place You Ever Worked? Think about the best place you ever worked. What made it great? I bet it was a combination of these factors: The boss was demanding, but she was positive and supportive. She had high standards and high expectations, but you felt...
Leadership Caffeine™—A One Line Job Description for Managers
If you manage, lead, or are otherwise responsible for the work of others, the working environment is everything. Creating a healthy working environment is literally your only job. Get this right and the results take care of themselves.
9 Tips for Nailing the Classroom Group Project Presentation
After sitting through a fair number of these presentations over the past few years, I’ve identified some common mistakes that detract from the quality of the final presentation and depress grades, not to mention instructors. The mistakes and misfires are generally a result of two issues: the very personal and irrational fear of presenting and some horrendously poor planning and coordination between group members.
Management and Career Miscellany on the Lighter Side
Management and Career Miscellany on the Lighter Side-a brief collection of anecdotes and personal perspectives on decision-making, project management, social networking. Oh, and some amusing and really bad career advice to ignore if you hear it.
Leadership Caffeine™: Learning to Adjust Your Altitude
While the phrase is most commonly referenced as attitude adjustment, I’ll go out on a limb and suggest that one of the abilities that leaders must develop to be effective is the ability to adjust their altitudes. Good leaders learn to scale institutional and intellectual heights with ease and comfort, quickly adapting to the audience and situation.
Jumpstart Your Marketing Reading to Retrain Your Brain
In my opinion, there’s never been a better time to get involved in the field of marketing. The advances in technology, the spread of social media and the incredible need that organizations everywhere have for individuals that get that marketing is a philosophy…a way of thinking and acting, and not a department, has never been greater.
Leadership Caffeine™: 8 Ideas for Remaining Personally Strong as a Leader
The paternal twins, Arrogance and Laziness are experts at biding their time and waiting for an opening to slip into your leadership party. Constant vigilance is the only way to keep these destructive gatecrashers from moving in and taking up residence as permanent parts of your leadership style.
Leadership Caffeine™: 7 Signs that Monotony and Routine Have Taken Over
Let’s face it, there’s much about the world of work for many that is monotonous or at least fairly routine. It’s easy in many roles to get lulled into the rhythms and routines of days, weeks and months. Wake-up, dress, get on the train, drink coffee, meet, talk, write, plan, meet some more and run to catch the express train home. Rinse and repeat. Monotony and routine are the natural born killers of creativity and innovation. Like weeds invading a spring lawn here in the Midwest, these twin killers quickly overwhelm the healthy pursuit of better, new and different.
It Takes Time and Experience to Find Your Leadership Voice
As an early career leader, you have little depth or breadth in your leadership voice. You struggle or at least strive to be relevant to your team members and your organization, and many flail in the process. Over time as you gain experience, learn and build confidence, a complex leadership personality begins to emerge. This is what those around you will take as your style, but you know that it is much more than an outward fashion statement. It’s who you are as a person that also happens to serve as a leader.
Leadership Caffeine™: 7 Odd Ideas to Help You Get Unstuck
While some argue that the natural order of life is towards entropy (a gradual decline into disorder), I would argue that the natural tendency of most humans is towards a kind of comfortable sameness and consistency in their daily lives. The pursuit of different requires more energy than the descent into routine. It is most definitely easier to not change. While comfortable and comforting, routine is the enemy of growth and progress and innovation
7 Ideas to Stimulate Experimentation in Your Organization
In some organizations, there are so many systemic and cultural disincentives to experimentation that it’s a wonder that executives and employees are able to decide what to have for lunch today that was different from yesterday. In spite of the natural inertia towards the sure thing or the shortcut (external advice in lieu of more risky and time-consuming experimentation), I’ll offer my few cents worth on why and how you and your firm can use experimentation as a means of building value and confounding competitors.