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Leadership Caffeine™: Managing Risk Without Stifling Experimentation

Nov 8, 2010

The art and science of management is much about coping with risk. There are few certain outcomes in business, and that’s particularly true when we factor in the reality that people are darned complex and don’t always act rationally. More often than not, I see managers and leaders looking at their world through the eyes of “what can go wrong?” and basing their decisions solely on attempting to minimize those identified adverse outcomes. Here are 5 ideas that leaders can use to help experimentation flourish on their teams.

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November Leadership Development Carnival: Early Bird Edition

Nov 7, 2010

Thanks to the hard work of all-around great guy and great blogger, Dan McCarthy at Great Leadership (that’s a lot of great!), you once again have an opportunity to peruse 40 great posts from people passionate about all things leadership and professional development. Dan graciously has assembled content from far and wide to educate, entertain and stimulate ideas. Check out the line-up at the latest edition of the Leadership Development Carnival (Early Bird Edition).

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Don’t Be Naive When It Comes to Driving Change

Nov 5, 2010

There are ample reasons for organizations to change business processes and business practices in this fast moving and complex environment. The market drivers are strong, the business justification is clear and often, ideas on how and where to change are clearly visible to some inside organizations. It’s too bad that most change management initiatives fail, in spite of the best of intentions. With a bit of advance warning and some darned hard work however, you may be able to avoid the fate of so many that have come before you. Learn to ask yourself some core questions and keep asking these questions and you might just put one in the win column.

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Never Rake Leaves Uphill and Other Management Lessons Learned in the Northwoods

Nov 4, 2010

Spend enough time writing, speaking and thinking about management and performance, and you’re likely to find yourself looking for lessons in all of your dealings. This certainly held true for me this past weekend, as I engaged in the annual fall ritual of cleaning up the leaves at the northwoods home. While the management guidance here might not make the next issue of HBR, if you ever face several hilly acres of ankle deep leaves, this might just save your back from breaking and your relationships from crumbling!

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Leadership Caffeine™: Learning to Ask for Help

Nov 1, 2010

I’ve not met a person yet that doesn’t need help from time to time, and this goes double for anyone in a leadership role. Leadership is frequently lonely and those that take their role seriously truly fret over decisions surrounded by ambiguity. The pressure to “figure it out” is tremendous, partially imposed by our fast moving and politically charged working environments, and partially imposed by our own misguided sense that to show that we need help is to show weakness. Here are seven ideas for properly and professionally asking for help.

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“And He Kicks Children in the Face,” and Other Insane Approaches to Competing

Oct 27, 2010

As business leaders, we make decisions every day about how our firms and our people compete. Most of us choose to focus on creating value and solving problems. A few resort to “win at all” costs type behaviors. This latter group poses some vexing problems for those of us that prefer the high-road style of competing for business, but the problems are not insurmountable. Here are six ideas for forming and framing a positive and effective competitive culture.

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Leadership Caffeine™-Stuck in a Rut? Try These Ideas On for Size

Oct 25, 2010

There’s an awful bad case of the “serious” malady running through our society right now, and for just a moment, we all deserve to unclench our jaws, breathe and even form that rare but powerful facial expression, the smile.

Consider this my attempt (albeit a weak one, I’m certain) to take a little of the seriousness out of your day while offering ideas that might just have something to them. Or, they might not, but, I’ll leave that for you to judge.

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Senior Leaders, It’s Time to Share Your Lessons Learned

Oct 19, 2010

I’ve had the great privilege this past year to work with a Fortune 50 company that is methodically conquering the retail world. Specifically, I’m working with a group of high-potential mid-level professionals all focused on increasing their contributions and growing their careers. During our recent time together, the program sponsors arranged for a good number of the senior executives of the corporation to sit down and share insights on how to develop as senior contributors; how to develop executive presence and in general, how to seize the opportunities being presented by the firm’s great growth. Over the course of 3 development days, we invested approximately 5 hours engaging with executives. The impact was priceless.

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Leadership Caffeine™: Strengthen as a Leader by Developing as a Follower

Oct 18, 2010

I grew up to the refrain of “be a leader, not a follower,” and the drive to lead is part of who I am. Part and parcel of that has been a natural resistance through much of my early career to the notion that, “to be a good leader, you need to be a good follower.” For me, and I know for many others, our ambition is to drive change, right wrongs and challenge the status quo and to advance. Mentally, it’s hard to connect those core professional drives with the passive and even weak sounding notion of “following.”

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