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Leadership Caffeine™ for the New Week: Creating Time to Get Stuff Done

Apr 13, 2009

A number of my last few posts have focused on thinking big, and a wise reader pointed out that with all of the dreaming and visioning he has been doing at my bequest, he’s falling hopelessly behind in his work.

Fair point, so grab a cup of something hot, along with a pen and paper, and don’t get too comfortable. After all, who has time to read blog posts all day, when there’s work to be done! This one’s short and sweet!

In my opinion, there’s still no substitute for the A, B, C list. It doesn’t matter if you create it on your p.c., on a notepad or on your iphone, just create one and use it to guide where you focus your time. The key is in establishing the proper criteria for prioritizing your tasks.

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Detoxing Your Team

Apr 7, 2009

Most of us can recall working with someone that had such a strong, negative impact on the work environment that you could literally feel the emotional mood swing when this person walked into a meeting.

For some unknown reason, perhaps a karmic-imbalance in the universe, these toxic characters have the unnerving and disconcerting tendency to be great survivors. While it is easy to intuit that toxic employees are value destroyers, we’ve been short on hard data about the true impact that these individuals have on the work environment. Until now.

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Dream and Act Big: Leadership Caffeine™ for the Week of April 5, 2009

Apr 5, 2009

This week’s jolt of energy is taken from a great interview with Jim Collins in the April, 2009 issue of Inc. Magazine. Collins connected with Inc. editor, Bo Burlingham to share views on the state of our world, building great businesses and entrepreneurship.

The entrepreneurial focus is relevant for many that have either been pushed into this world through downsizing or are considering it as they grow weary of the uncertainties of corporate life. And whether you are a budding entrepreneur or not, the insights, guidance and reminder to dream and act big are appropriate and inspirational.

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Develop Culture Sensing Skills and Take the Blinders Off Of Your Career

Apr 3, 2009

One of my greatest career misfires was accepting a role in a firm where I had failed to properly assess the culture. I was blinded by the allure of this successful and global firm and by the sharp people that I met during the interview process.

I can think of few skills more important for professionals, product and project managers and other lateral leaders to develop than culture sensing. All of the functional or vocational expertise in the world is for naught if the individual fails to take into account and leverage cultural idiosyncrasies to achieve results and drive performance improvements.

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New Leaders, Twitter and the Volunteer Management Conundrum

Apr 2, 2009

The Top Ten Challenges of the New Leader, an update on my experience with Twitter (and why all marketers should join), and the Volunteer Management conundrum in our communities that we are capable of solving. Oh, and three developmental suggestions for your professional “To Do” list.

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Management Lessons From the Memphis Belle-Rule #1

Mar 26, 2009

We were in the early days of our trench warfare trying to save the company, so it was natural that we felt a kinship with the pilot and crew of the Belle. As we drank and watched, we began to discover business rules and management lessons within the war-movie plot. By the time we were done, we had Ten Rules of Management From The Memphis Belle. Then, Paul came up with an 11th. I cussed and said “you can’t just have an odd number like 11” – so we replayed the movie in our heads and thought of 9 more.

And thus we discovered the 20 Lessons From The Memphis Belle. We had them printed up on little cards and handed them out to employees. We gifted them to strategic partners and customers. We printed them on posters and hung them in our offices. When we ran into a hard issue in the business we would refer to the Rules: more often than not there was a rule that was right on point. Each time we’d be amazed, but then we’d say: “Ah! The Rules know all!”

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Values in Action-Helping Your Son or Daughter Choose a College

Mar 24, 2009

For anyone who has lived through the process of supporting their son or daughter in the search for a college, it is a truly exciting, perplexing and tiring endeavor. It’s also an opportunity to watch values in action at the various institutions as well as with your own child as they wrestle with what is to them a monumental choice.

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Leadership Caffeine™ for the Week of March 22, 2009

Mar 22, 2009

One of the great things about my view on innovation is that it’s not the sole domain of the engineers, researchers and technologists. My definition of innovation might invite a bit of controversy, but it allows me to extend it to everyone and every function in an organization. There are no boundaries that limit where innovation can take place.

The faster you get people focused on problem-solving and in the mindset of “seizing opportunities,” the more effective you will be at pushing fear out the door in favor of value creating activities. It’s time to push the “GO” button on your innovation machine.

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That Seismic Shift You Are About To Hear is Management Revolution

Mar 20, 2009

Something’s gone horribly wrong with our pre-established convictions and our comfortable understanding of the old rules of business and management. There was no memo. The new rules are not written in stone anywhere, and in fact they are changing so quickly, that by the time you understand and write them down, they’ve changed yet again. Heck, a good number of firms and leaders never optimized under the old rules, and now look at what they are facing!

It’s time to overthrow the archaic, dysfunctional leadership and management practices of the past!

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Leadership Caffeine™ for the Week of March 16, 2009

Mar 15, 2009

Your weekly dose of Leadership Caffeine offers reminders and tips for improving communications, engaging your team members and helping knock down obstacles. Oh, and take a second sip of the iced coffee and spend a few minutes thinking about how you might leverage your firm’s values as powerful leadership tools.

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