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Tripping Points and the Leader

Jun 18, 2010

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. Often, the only viable solution to get beyond a Tripping Point is to retool the management team with people that have experience creating the infrastructure and programs/teams/processes needed to reach the next few levels. 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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What If? Why Not? And Other Incredible Business Adventures

Jun 16, 2010

While we celebrate companies that pursue and succeed in radically changing the rules of the game, let’s face it, most organizations run on inertia.

For every company that redefines their little part of the world and changes our culture just a bit, there are plenty of firms that run on autopilot until the fuel runs out and the plane needs to be ditched in the ocean. The forces of globalization and digitization create storms and headwinds for some that are just too strong to overcome.

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5 Actions to Improve Leadership Development in Your Firm

Jun 15, 2010

When it comes to leadership development, sweeping corporate mandates and expensive training initiatives are rarely as effective as consistent blocking and tackling. Your own practices are capable of creating a new and next generation of professionals that carry the right approaches and ultimately innovate and improve upon your achievements.

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Leadership Caffeine™-Effective Leaders Learn to Pivot

Jun 14, 2010

Like the brother-in-law that you dodge at family gatherings to avoid his pitch on the latest “can’t fail, get rich quick” business scheme, some people are involved in a constant game of that childhood classic, Chutes and Ladders. Catch one ladder and you skip over the rest of us as we wind our way along on journeys of unknown destination and duration. Occasionally, these short-cut seekers find their way into positions of business and leadership responsibility, and the results range from a preoccupation with the near-term to overt decisions to cut corners in an attempt to move faster. However, the effective leader recognizes that there are no true short-cuts.

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Friday Shorts from Management Excellence

Jun 11, 2010

Resources, great reads and sound bites for your summer weekends. This post features a great article on decision-making from Harvard Business Review, a link to a post on “What Twitter Can Teach Leaders About Effective Communication,” and links to the Leadership Tip(s) of the Day at Building Better Leaders. Enjoy your weekend!

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Leading to the Values

Jun 9, 2010

Are your firm’s values worth the price of the frames that they presently occupy while hanging in your lobby, the main conference room and your CEO’s office? What should be potent guides to behavior and frequent reference points for talent and business decisions are often nothing more than artwork.

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It’s Summer on My Calendar-Friday Shorts are Back!

Jun 4, 2010

I don’t care that my calendar marks a day later in June as the official start of Summer. Memorial Day has passed, the temperature and humidity in Chicago are rising and tennis with my sons is a regular evening activity. Oh, and the list of outside chores is now long enough to choke the proverbial horse. (Note: no horses were choked in the writing of this post.) Given the shift in seasons, I’m excited to bring back my Shorts feature here every Friday from June until the end of August. I’ll offer up suggested business beach reads, a resource of the week and I’ll point you to some Leadership Tips that you might have missed. Enjoy!

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Have You Been Observed Recently?

Jun 2, 2010

Professional sports teams and great athletes have long understood the power of watching game film to learn about themselves as well as the strategies and tendencies of their opponents. Aside from professional speakers, few of us in business benefit from either viewing ourselves in action on film, and sadly too few of us benefit from good feedback and mentoring from our managers and colleagues.

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