Over an extended career, you will make more than one hiring mistake. I guarantee it. No hiring manager escapes unscathed in this process. While a misfire is inevitable, this painful mistake (for you, your firm and the hire) is packed with some powerful life and career lessons. Here are 5 big lessons I’ve learned the hard way:
There’s an interesting article at Harvard Business Review, entitled, “How to Manage a Team of B Players,” by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic. I appreciate the author’s attempt at describing the leadership challenge and approach to molding a group of “ordinary” individuals into a high performance team. He offers some compelling guidance. I am however, uncomfortable with his easy use of the term, “B-Players.” And while I am absolutely guilty in the past of using the A, B, C, designation to characterize individuals and their level of skill/capability/potential, I’ve grown uncomfortable with the cavalier assignment of people to these categories.
All of us are involved in negotiating for something on a fairly frequent basis, and over and over again, most of us make the same critical mistake. We reduce the negotiation to a battle of wills over positions (I want/You want) and we try and brute force our way to a conclusion. For many situations, there’s a better way.
There’s an interesting interview at McKinsey, with Heidreck & Struggles CEO, Tracy Wolstencroft, that explores what they describe as the changing nature of leadership in this era of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. The interview prompted my own consideration of some of the changing leadership behaviors I’m observing in firms who are succeeding in navigating the fog of these times.
Most of the tools of management were conceived in an era characterized by a great deal of consistency and predictability…two attributes in short supply today. It’s time to rethink everything, including the tools we use to manage and plan for our very uncertain futures. There is no substitute for the right tool. Sometimes, you simply have to create that tool.
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....
(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.
(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:
Note: this post originally appeared at the Management Excellence blog by Art Petty. The pursuit of effective management is a noble calling. It’s too bad that too many managers give it a bad name. Here are at least 10 unnatural acts of less than brilliant managers:
It’s hard to argue with either of these statements, nonetheless, too many project managers deeply skilled in the mechanics of their vocation fall short on learning and practicing the soft-skills critical for high performance team development. When project fail…and too many do, there’s a safe bet that people-related issues are key contributors to the initiative’s demise. Great project managers define their role beyond the project mechanics liberally. Here are 7 steps to help you define and begin using your own Project Leader’s Charter in pursuit of high performance:
