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The Five Tripping Points of Emerging Leaders

Feb 5, 2009

A colleague used the phrase Tripping Points in conversation the other night to describe what leaders and management teams go through in attempting to take businesses from one level to the next. Firms and teams run into natural Tripping Points in the form of infrastructure and know-how as they work to grow a firm from start-up to $10 million or from $10 million to $25 million and so on. I can easily apply Tripping Point thinking to the challenges that we as professionals face in advancing our careers and in particular, in developing as leaders. Awareness of your prospective Tripping Points is an important first step in creating your personal and professional development plan.

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The Leader’s Mid-Week Survival Guide

Feb 4, 2009

Hey, it’s Wednesday. How are you doing on your leadership priorities this week?

If you are starting to feel the week slip away from you, here’s a blunt reminder and a few tips to focus on your true priorities. The week’s not over yet…and victory is still within your reach. It’s time to fight off the fires and push away from the urgent-unimportant.

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Your Customer Service Tells Me All I Need to Know About Your Management Quality

Feb 3, 2009

Of my many quirks, one that I actually enjoy is my unceasing study of customer service. I love to observe customer service interactions and I’ve made it a habit to try and figure out why the good ones are good and the bad ones so miserable. Here are a few thoughts and few light-hearted examples to for managers everywhere to learn from.

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Five Tips for Leading Change When You’re Not In Charge

Jan 30, 2009

As I continue on my career respite from managing a business that’s not mine, I’m increasingly conscious of the significant gap between the needs and ideas of employees and the attention and interest of senior managers. There are so many remarkable ideas and thoughts on improving performance that never see the light of day that it is staggering. I offer five suggestions for driving change when you’re not in charge. I’m hoping that readers will add a few more of their own.

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Your Recruiting Practices Might Just Be Killing Your Business

Jan 29, 2009

It’s long past overdue to change the way you recruit talent. The way you’ve been doing it is wrong, and it is hurting your business. This topic is particularly important, because there is a goldmine of talent on the street in this lousy economy. Your opportunity to strengthen your firm with hungry, motivated and powerful people will never be better IF you execute properly.

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The Case of the Rapidly Shrinking Attention Span

Jan 28, 2009

Are we losing our ability to focus? Maybe. Maybe we never had it, and it is the exception instead of the rule, but it just seems so much harder in this environment to focus on an issue and work through it to creative, complete solutions. We’re too busy racing from one sound-bite opportunity to another, focusing our precious gray matter on topics for nanoseconds before the next interruption comes along.

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The Words of Leaders

Jan 21, 2009

We were discussing the failure of many organizations to stop old ways of doing things, even in the face of overwhelming proof that the old ways don’t work. My student mentioned that the appointment of a new CEO last year had at first been encouraging until it was clear that nothing would truly change. This unfortunate event is all too common.

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A Rave Against Miserable Customer Service, Lousy Leaders and Protectionist Policies

Jan 14, 2009

One of my favorite, provocative business thinkers, Gary Hamel, says what we’ve all been thinking about in his Wall Street Journal blog post, “Too Many Industries Suffering from Detroititis.” Hamel appropriately skewers the U.S. Airlines as suffering from this malady of poor customer service and short-term thinking, all propped up by the government’s artificial protectionist policies. I offer a few of my own thoughts on the “delightful” experience of flying U.S. carriers and what you can do in your organization to avoid the dreaded new disease, “Detroititis.”

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