Strategy Archives

Introducing The Saturday Serial—An Ongoing Management & Leadership Case

Feb 7, 2015

Welcome to The Saturday Serial! This new series reflects my intent and attempt to share and cultivate management and leadership lessons beyond the format of a stale blog post and endless lists of “10 ideas to… .” While I love writing the Management Excellence blog and the first 1,025 posts are testament to my commitment, I’ve wanted to experiment with the serial and management fable format here for a long time. Beginning with my first episode, “Welcome to ACME John Anderson,” you will meet a growing cast of characters facing a series of very real management, leadership and career challenges in this fictional high-tech, global conglomerate and its various units and divisions. Enjoy!

Revisiting The 5 Priceless Lessons from Amundsen and Scott

Feb 2, 2015

Given the recent storms and polar-like weather in the Midwest and Northeast, it seems fitting to revisit the priceless management and leadership lessons gleaned from Amundsen and Scott in their race to 90-degrees south. These lessons never grow cold!

Art of Managing—Steering Clear of Flail and Fail

Dec 18, 2014

Businesses of all sizes, shapes and ages run into rough patches. Rapid growth, disruptive competitors or technologies, regulatory changes or the end of the road for well-worn strategies are all potential culprits in the move from success to struggle. It’s critical at this point for a firm’s leaders and managers to react carefully and appropriately in this unfamiliar terrain or they risk moving quickly from flail to fail. They invite flailure. Here are 5 ideas to stem the tide when the flailing starts:

In Pursuit of Senior Management Team Cohesion

Nov 16, 2014

In the most recent post in this series, I emphasized the importance of carefully cultivating senior management team chemistry …particularly when it comes to neutralizing the impact of toxic participants. However, even with the positive situation of a ph-neutral group of senior leaders (including the CEO) at the management team roundtable, there’s still no guarantee of high performance. As we shift away from the issue of toxicity (a deal-killer for team performance) and move towards cultivating high performance at the senior management group level, the ideas of team cohesion and team attraction come into play. Here are 5 ideas to help you begin to promote team cohesion:

The Sticky Topics of Senior Management Team Chemistry & Performance

Nov 5, 2014

The use of the word “team” to reference the collection of a firm’s senior leaders is generous at best and fallacious in many cases. Senior managers don’t necessarily gel as a team and perhaps a more accurate description of them in the context of a group might be that they are a collection of intelligent, successful functional leaders who occasionally come together and tolerate each other for a few hours of collegial discussion. Here are a number of ideas to get the toxicity out and the performance up:

Art of Managing—Moving Beyond A Failure to Execute

Oct 29, 2014

Resolving the failure to execute problem is much more like a long-term fitness program than a quick weight-loss diet. It involves changing the thinking about what’s most important for organizational health and success and doing the hard work of developing new habits that support continuous improvement. Here are 7 ideas to help you begin developing some healthy new habits:

Art of Managing—Don’t Set Artificial Limits on Employee Involvement

Sep 15, 2014

A firm’s senior leaders and managers are supposed to feel the weight of responsibility for the health of their organization. It comes with the job. However, no one suggested they bear the weight of the worries or the burden of finding the solutions in silence and without ample support from the broader employee population. Here are 6 ideas to help you jump-start improved employee involvement in strengthening your business:

Art of Managing—Beware the Lure of Strategy in a Box Approaches

Aug 18, 2014

Strategy is one of those difficult topics that dog most management teams and most firms. The real work of strategy is challenging, time consuming and filled with hard-to-answer questions. Given the challenges of managing an effective, on-going strategy process, it’s no surprise “Strategy in a Box” approaches are often adopted by management teams looking to add a check mark to the strategy task on their annual goals. Here are some key reasons why there are no shortcuts when it comes to strategy:

Leadership Caffeine™—In Praise of Mistakes Made for the Right Reasons

Jul 20, 2014

Show me a mistake-free leader, and I’ll show you someone hiding from the real issues confronting the business: people and strategy.

Art of Managing—Shiny Objects and the Senior Management Team

Apr 13, 2014

One of the value killers found inside many organizations is the out of control pursuit of too many new initiatives. The root cause of this undisciplined pursuit of new initiatives rests squarely on the collective shoulders of the management team.

The Leadership Caffeine Blog

Introducing The Saturday Serial—An Ongoing Management & Leadership Case

Revisiting The 5 Priceless Lessons from Amundsen and Scott

Art of Managing—Steering Clear of Flail and Fail

In Pursuit of Senior Management Team Cohesion

The Sticky Topics of Senior Management Team Chemistry & Performance

Art of Managing—Moving Beyond A Failure to Execute

Art of Managing—Don’t Set Artificial Limits on Employee Involvement

Art of Managing—Beware the Lure of Strategy in a Box Approaches

Leadership Caffeine™—In Praise of Mistakes Made for the Right Reasons

Art of Managing—Shiny Objects and the Senior Management Team

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