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Leadership Caffeine™ for the New Week: Leadership Lessons from Twitter

Jun 15, 2009

It takes a certain amount of curiosity and yes, even courage for forty-something corporate types to even admit that there might just be something to a social networking tool like Twitter. Many of my contemporaries scoff and mock the tool and anyone participating.

As leaders, we often lose our intellectual curiosity and courage as we move through our careers. We’ve seen it all before and we’re well aware in our own minds that when you take risks and do something a bit edgy, most of the time, bad things happen. We’ve seen fads come and go, and to many of us, this is just one more fad.

To those involved, it is part of the fundamental rewriting of the rules…

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A Fresh Voice and Leadership and the Art of Apology

Jun 11, 2009

There’s an excellent post entitled, “Sorry is not the final word, just the beginning,” by guest author and Product/Project Management Consultant, Lisa Winter at one of my favorite blogs: The Art of Project Management. hosted by the UCSC-Extension in Silicon Valley.

Ms. Winter describes a situation where she inadvertently upset a valuable but delicate team member on a conference call, and then went to significant lengths to apologize and regain his support. In addition to the happy ending, this fine post prompted some thoughts on a topic that I confess I’ve not spent a lot of time thinking about: the role of the apology as a leadership tool.

I can’t help but feel a little guilty that I’ve not raised this topic in the past, and for that, I apologize…(OK, I had to work it in somewhere!).

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Leadership Caffeine™ for the Week: Coffee, Your Health and 8 Suggestions to Improve Your Team’s Problem Solving Skills

Jun 8, 2009

The best learning opportunities in the workplace occur when individuals or teams come face to face with a vexing problem. These situations provide outstanding growth opportunities and a great chance to generate and implement innovative and creative solutions. Of course, the manager has to play by the rules.

Unfortunately, there are still a few managers and leaders out there that insist on spoiling these ripe learning opportunities by requiring you to follow a specific approach or steps in solving a problem.

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Leadership Caffeine™ for the New Week: The Words You Heard At Graduation Still Apply

Jun 1, 2009

Followers of this blog know that we celebrated a milestone in our home this past week as our youngest son graduated from high school. It’s an exciting and frightening experience for the child as he reaches the end of a long road with good friends and looks forward to a new and uncharted path through college.

What he doesn’t perhaps know is that is only the first of many likely experiences of becoming part of something and then moving on and leaving good colleagues behind.

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Life, Professional Development, Quality and the Art of Ceiling Painting

May 28, 2009

Our youngest son wraps up his high school career and like many families across the country, we are holding an open house for friends and neighbors to celebrate the event.

And like many husbands in similar situations across the country, I’m in charge of finishing up those chores that I put off all winter while I was writing Leadership and the Project Manager or teaching or delivering workshops or talking about performance excellence to industry groups.

Today’s chore is to paint the kitchen ceiling.

Like almost every job in life and in business, a successful outcome is a function of detailed preparation, a good plan and painstaking attention to the issues that potentially will impact the outcome. The patching, sanding, masking, cutting-in and thorough application of paint are all critical to the final outcome. Oh, and don’t forget the drop cloths to catch collateral spatter.

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Fresh Voices: Management in the 21st Century

May 27, 2009

If you are fascinated as I am about the evolution of management and its role, form and function in our current and near future world, I strongly encourage you to check out Gary Hamel’s blog post (Help Reinvent Management for the 21st Century).

This is a case where the post prompts a flood of great thoughts and ideas from some sharp people from around the globe.

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The Drive to Create—Rocket Fuel for Entrepreneurs

May 20, 2009

I sat and talked yesterday with a uniquely impressive entrepreneur. She is not yet successful, and in fact she is barely two weeks young in her new adventure. If I was asked to handicap her chances of success, the odds would be very good.

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Leadership and the Project Manager-Critical Skills for Success and a New e-Book

May 19, 2009

Great project managers are also great leaders. The best of the project managers are senior contributors that understand their role is more about helping the group succeed than it is about conducting status meetings and revising and distributing reports.

My new e-Book, Leadership and the Project Manager—Developing the Skills that Fuel High Performance, was written to serve as a “Quick-Start” to developing as a senior contributor for anyone (certified or not) that is charged with leading and managing projects.

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Leadership Caffeine™ for the New Week: Bad Coffee and The Tyranny of Consensus

May 18, 2009

Like bad coffee, I’m not particularly fond of leading by consensus or even seeking consensus as a decision-making tool. I’ve long viewed managing by consensus as a “Tyranny of Mediocrity” approach to leading and making decisions. In seeking consensus, compromises are made that eliminate the more radical, revolutionary innovations and settle on solutions that make as many parties as possible happy.

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