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Leadership Caffeine™: 9 Ideas to Help You Jump the Gap Between Failure and Success

Jul 11, 2011

People and teams fail on their way to success all of the time. That’s great. That’s how it’s supposed to work. The people and groups I struggle with are those who just fail. Often, the gap between failure and success appears wide, deep and ominous. This perceived gap keeps people frozen in place for a long while and then as time passes, fear turns to regret. Here are 9 ideas to help you jump the gap from failure to success.

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Seven Management Lessons Learned on Vacation

Jul 7, 2011

Fresh from a week at the lake with 11 people in residence and up to 35 people on our beach for a party at one point, it’s nice to reflect back on the fun, memories and of course to tie-in some lighter management and leadership lessons. Here are a few lessons that jump to mind after our most recent experience.

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Leadership Caffeine™: Do You See Beauty or Blemishes?

Jun 27, 2011

If you’ve ever worked for or around someone who is an expert critic…one of those individuals who can look at a masterpiece and spot a flaw, you know how demoralizing the experience can be. They look at beautiful pictures or great outcomes and focus on describing the flaws. Here are 5 ideas for improving performance by overcoming your own tendency to look for the blemishes.

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Send in the Clones. The Abuse of “Must Have” in Recruiting and Hiring

Jun 23, 2011

Aside from a few obvious technical and vocational roles, there are very few positions in most organizations that absolutely “Must Have” someone who has held the identical role in the same industry with the same job. Nonetheless, the use of “Must Have” remains a staple in recruiting and hiring. It’s too bad, because over-reliance on “Must Have” can lead to a chronic case of mediocrity or worse, a terminal case of recycled bad ideas from industry participants.

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Leadership Caffeine™: 4 Ideas for Navigating Organizational Politics

Jun 20, 2011

Much like the notion of “pursuing power,” the idea of “playing politics” conjures up dirty images of questionable behind-the-scenes machinations and a vision of toes or faces being stepped on by those engaged in a series of less than noble games. And while those environments exist, it’s been my experience that the political environment in most firms is a bit more collegial than the television-type drama we often associate with organizational politics. Having said that, don’t confuse collegial with noble or even nice.

It’s important for all of us to tune-in to the political environment of our organizations and learn the unwritten rules of success. The four ideas below were prompted by my observations while running a long-term project inside a very successful and aggressive large company.

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Lend a Coaching Hand to Your First-Time Leaders

Jun 14, 2011

Your presence as a coach and a stakeholder in the development of the new leader will have a significant impact on the outcome for this emerging leader. And your positive example will be visible to all to learn from and emulate.

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Leadership Caffeine™-Need Market Insight? Ride with a Sales Rep and Learn

Jun 13, 2011

I had just been hired on in a senior strategic marketing role in an industry new to me, and job one was acclimating to the market and industry dynamics and trying to understand what a customer looked like in this world. After the obligatory round of meetings with company executives, division heads and as many of their team members as I could convince to allocate some time, I recognized that the context, while appreciated, lacked the depth you can only gain from connecting with customers and industry players on their home turf. No rocket science here, just good common sense. Here are 5 valuable lessons I learned through the eyes and windshields of some top sales representatives.

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Three Great Hiring Habits I Learned from a Remarkable Manager

Jun 9, 2011

One mis-hire can poison the workplace pond, tarnish your reputation and impact your team’s/firm’s ability to execute. Do this a few times and your mistakes will likely knock you out of the hiring game and potentially into the cozy confines of today’s crowded unemployment lines. Unfortunately, the average manager isn’t very good at assessing talent and making the right call. Here are three great hiring habits I learned from a remarkable sales manager:

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Why It’s Time to Ditch Your Plans for the Summer Strategy Off-Site

Jun 8, 2011

From the symbolism of the annual off-site strategy event to the cost to the fact that strategic thinking time is reduced to a once or twice a year event, this approach is anachronistic in a world with markets and conditions changing daily. In twenty years of these things with some great people and great businesses, I’ve yet to see anything come out of these meetings that changed our businesses. I will offer that they did allow for another layer of vetting and idea absorption. Nonetheless, the heavy lifting took place with others outside of the cozy confines of a resort or hotel meeting room. It’s time to ditch the annual strategy off-site.

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