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Leading the Driven Individual

Jan 15, 2010

A great deal of popular leadership writing (mine included) focuses on the common issues and challenges with “typical employees.” Now before you grab a pitchfork and light the torches and start marching on this blog for my use of the term “typical,” don’t misconstrue my meaning. Yes, I know that no one is “typical” and that we all have strengths and weaknesses and that it is grossly unfair to provide such a crass label to the masses of good quality employees laboring away and earning “strongly exceeds” on our grade-inflated performance evaluations. (I can hear the pitchforks clanking again on that last shot!) Nonetheless, it was the best label I could come up with on short notice and only a few sips into my first cup of coffee, to differentiate from the subject of today’s post: The Driven Individual (DI).

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Leading in the Trenches-Recovering from Trickle Down Project Management Chaos

Nov 3, 2009

Project inflation…the spread of too many projects and the heaping of them upon the tormented and torn few is a formula for disaster. Unfortunately, work force reductions and pressures to reduce costs, improve processes and to innovate all fuel project inflation. Consider adopting a rigorous approach to project selection by asking and answering these following questions:

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Leading in the Trenches: How Well Do You Know Your Customers?

Sep 30, 2009

If you don’t know your customers at a sufficient level of detail, including their hopes, dreams and emotions, everything you are doing includes a high degree of guesswork and randomness. Your messaging likely includes a great deal of blah blah about your firm. Promotional activities are fired from a shotgun, and while they occasionally hit something, there is no viable, sustainable marketing system in place.

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Management Excellence News, Updates & Coming Attractions

Aug 21, 2009

Note from Art: While I’m remarkably sensitive to not creating an infomercial out of my blog, I am involved in a number of exciting activities that I’ve shared with some of you personally. Here’s a bit broader update and a call for speakers and interview subjects.

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Jump-Start Strategy By Jumping Straight to the Middle of the Process

Jul 17, 2009

Get your team talking about the right topics and get them focused on assessing and comparing based on the criteria that are the most important to your success. Skip the summer strategy offsite and start the dialogue on determining what’s truly important, and you’ll find yourself and your organization moving and working the right things faster than you might imagine.

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A Fresh Voice and Leadership and the Art of Apology

Jun 11, 2009

There’s an excellent post entitled, “Sorry is not the final word, just the beginning,” by guest author and Product/Project Management Consultant, Lisa Winter at one of my favorite blogs: The Art of Project Management. hosted by the UCSC-Extension in Silicon Valley.

Ms. Winter describes a situation where she inadvertently upset a valuable but delicate team member on a conference call, and then went to significant lengths to apologize and regain his support. In addition to the happy ending, this fine post prompted some thoughts on a topic that I confess I’ve not spent a lot of time thinking about: the role of the apology as a leadership tool.

I can’t help but feel a little guilty that I’ve not raised this topic in the past, and for that, I apologize…(OK, I had to work it in somewhere!).

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What Are You Doing to Reinvent Your Professional Self?

Apr 30, 2009

A fact of life in our world is that you will inevitably face the prospect of having to reinvent your professional self. For many this is a daunting task that gets put off along with getting in shape, painting the house and writing a book. The dream is nice, but the lack of action keeps it firmly out there somewhere in a hoped-for future.

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Nine Power Techniques for Building Your Leadership Credibility

Apr 24, 2009

Whether you are a first-time leader, an experienced manager taking over a new team or an informal leader such as a project or product manager, you will be as successful as you are credible. Your credibility is your professional bedrock. Build on it carefully and constantly.

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The Potentially Profound Implications of Kindle

Apr 23, 2009

Amazon’s remarkable second version of their Kindle book reader has some profound implications for all of us. Here’s a “glowing” review and some speculative thoughts on what this device might just mean for a number of industries.

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