In a recent discussion with a potential literary agent for my book proposal for, “Level-Up—The Career Guide to Surviving and Thriving in an Era of Change,” the agent suggested that books built around the theme of “change” were unlikely to sell. That perspective is preposterous. Learning to help our organizations navigate change while constantly leveling up in our own careers is a core challenge that all of us face in our professional lives. We need more help on this, not less, regardless of the views of publishers. Here’s why…
The Leadership Caffeine Blog
Leadership Caffeine—Start Coloring Outside the Lines
From our earliest days in school, we are taught to “color inside the lines.” In a world where everything is changing, this advice might just contribute to the demise of your firm or career. It’s time to push beyond the boundaries of those lines that constrain so much creativity.
Confessions of a Maverick Hiring Manager
Relying upon traditional hiring practices and dogma can leave your organization starved for the talent necessary to navigate the challenges facing your firm and industry. Sometimes, you have to go maverick!
Fight Inertia
Recognizing the need to change something in your life or career is an essential first step. Breaking the bonds of the inertial forces that keep you tethered to the status quo is the hard part.
Sometimes Leading Means Eating Culture for Lunch
There’s a stark contrast between caretaker leaders focused on the status quo and leaders who lead in the face of adversity and the need to change. The latter use the firm’s culture as a tool to enable change. They also draw upon these 11 key behaviors:
Leadership Caffeine™—Fight to Eliminate Obstacles
Too many firms act as their own worst enemies by sustaining rules and processes that no longer apply and that block the freedom and flexibility of employees and teams to experiment and innovate. Effective leaders and managers work daily to change or eliminate these blockers. Here’s a dose of encouragement and some ideas for you to spark a healthy revolution of change in support of your team:
Leadership Caffeine™—Seeing and Observing
We spend an incredible amount of time immersed in a world of our own fabrication—the world as it feels and looks and acts from inside our organization’s walls. It’s not the culture that will kill you, it’s the view. It’s time to change it. Take off the blinders and look up and out further. Extend your focal point.
Just One Thing—Think Big(ger)
I confess to having cultivated a strong affinity for Big Thinkers in my advancing years as an executive. The flip-side of this growing affinity is my creeping impatience and dismissal of small thinkers. Given the scale and scope of the challenges in our world and in our industries and firms, small thinkers are a drag on the drive to change. And yes, life and our careers are too short to think small.
High Performance Management—All Strategy Work is Personal
Most businesses and most management teams flail and fail when it comes to the work of strategy. In today’s world, where the long-cycle strategy process has been replaced by short-bursts of experimentation and iteration, it’s essential to reduce the fail and flail by attacking the root causes of so much dysfunction with this work. Here are 7-Steps to to help the senior team get it right:
Leadership Caffeine™—Running Uphill Against the Wind
The oft-cited and disturbingly dismal numbers reported about employee engagement tell an interesting story about leadership effectiveness…or the lack thereof. Even in an environment of aberrant leadership behavior and high levels of unengaged employees, you have the ability and obligation to carve our a “safe” zone where people are treated with respect and support.





