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Know Your Mission-More Management Lessons from the Memphis Belle

Apr 21, 2009

For this second installment of the business rules that my friend Paul Byrne and I derived from watching the movie the Memphis Belle (see my first installment: Management Lessons from the Memphis Belle-Rule #1), I am departing from the order in which we originally wrote the rules.

Instead, because it is a concept so fundamental to our success in anything we do, I am jumping to Rules 11, 16 and 19, all of which underscore the importance of being totally “mission aware”. Without a sense of our mission, the rest of the rules are meaningless.

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From Strategic Planning to Strategic Conversations

Apr 16, 2009

While there is no doubt that strategic planning done right is a valuable management process and tool, in my opinion, we need to change both the vernacular and the approaches to move from strategic planning to conducting strategic conversations. Frankly, I want everyone in my firm thinking, talking and relating their work activities to the firm’s strategies for creating customer value and thumping competitors.

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Leadership Caffeine™ for the New Week: Creating Time to Get Stuff Done

Apr 13, 2009

A number of my last few posts have focused on thinking big, and a wise reader pointed out that with all of the dreaming and visioning he has been doing at my bequest, he’s falling hopelessly behind in his work.

Fair point, so grab a cup of something hot, along with a pen and paper, and don’t get too comfortable. After all, who has time to read blog posts all day, when there’s work to be done! This one’s short and sweet!

In my opinion, there’s still no substitute for the A, B, C list. It doesn’t matter if you create it on your p.c., on a notepad or on your iphone, just create one and use it to guide where you focus your time. The key is in establishing the proper criteria for prioritizing your tasks.

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Help Wanted: Visionaries and Dreamers-Safe Return Doubtful

Apr 8, 2009

While it has never been substantiated that the explorer and leader Ernest Shackleton actually placed this ad, these few short sentences have taken on a life of their own. They read:

“Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honor and recognition in case of success.”

There are those in this world that run towards these types of opportunities and others that run away as fast as they can. I’ve always been inspired by individuals that look beyond the here and now and issues of the moment to see and seize the opportunity to do something great.

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Detoxing Your Team

Apr 7, 2009

Most of us can recall working with someone that had such a strong, negative impact on the work environment that you could literally feel the emotional mood swing when this person walked into a meeting.

For some unknown reason, perhaps a karmic-imbalance in the universe, these toxic characters have the unnerving and disconcerting tendency to be great survivors. While it is easy to intuit that toxic employees are value destroyers, we’ve been short on hard data about the true impact that these individuals have on the work environment. Until now.

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Inspiration and Hope: Encouraging Sound Bites in a Challenging World

Mar 10, 2009

There’s enough negative going around. Here’s a few worth reading that will leave you thinking and maybe even feeling a bit more upbeat. Students of strategy and performance excellence might want to take a closer look at how McDonald’s is using leadership, strategy, customer relations and information to successfully beat back the economic doldrums. And for an extended dose of hope and encouragement, check out the March issue of Fast Company, where the focus is on the world’s most innovative companies.

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Too Many Projects Chasing Too Few People-It’s Time to Learn to Say No!

Mar 3, 2009

One of the themes that I hear consistently in workshops and in discussions with the professionals in my MBA classes is frustration over the propensity of a firm’s leaders to never say “No” to a project. Lacking a viable mechanism to compare, evaluate and select and reject projects, decisions are made based on politics, gut feel and the squeaky customer wheel.

The net result of this lack of discipline is that the people doing the work end up overloaded and overwhelmed. They operate in compliance mode, focusing on surviving until the next deadline and adding little creative value or innovation to their activities.

You can end this chaos and rebuild your team’s morale and effectiveness by building in new systems and proper rigor to project evaluation and selection.

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Leadership Lessons from the Road

Feb 27, 2009

One of the great things about leading workshops with talented professionals is how much I learn about the very real challenges that people face in trying to get work done inside their organizations. After spending a day together working with a group technical professionals at The Data Warehouse Institute’s World Conference, I gained some insights into the challenges and barriers that are slowing down progress and inhibiting performance improvements inside organizations.

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“Why Did We Fire You?” Talent Gaffes of the Big and Clueless

Feb 12, 2009

If it wasn’t so sad, it would be laughable. The question, “Why did we fire you?” expressed with surprise and genuine confusion was asked by a senior HR exec to a talented and fired sales rep at MegaFirm.

This sales rep was the “last one standing” that actually understood how to sell the products that MegaFirm had inherited with one of its many acquisitions. The products are still there, but the people aren’t. MegaFirm unleashed the neutron bomb from its powerful HR arsenal.

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