best practices in leadership Archives

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

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.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:46:05-05:00April 13th, 2009|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|3 Comments

Detoxing Your Team

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.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:46:08-05:00April 7th, 2009|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|10 Comments

Management Lessons From the Memphis Belle-Rule #1

We were in the early days of our trench warfare trying to save the company, so it was natural that we felt a kinship with the pilot and crew of the Belle. As we drank and watched, we began to discover business rules and management lessons within the war-movie plot. By the time we were done, we had Ten Rules of Management From The Memphis Belle. Then, Paul came up with an 11th. I cussed and said “you can’t just have an odd number like 11” - so we replayed the movie in our heads and thought of 9 more. And thus we discovered the 20 Lessons From The Memphis Belle. We had them printed up on little cards and handed them out to employees. We gifted them to strategic partners and customers. We printed them on posters and hung them in our offices. When we ran into a hard issue in the business we would refer to the Rules: more often than not there was a rule that was right on point. Each time we’d be amazed, but then we’d say: “Ah! The Rules know all!”

By Eric Lieberman|2024-08-08T13:46:17-05:00March 26th, 2009|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|2 Comments

Values in Action-Helping Your Son or Daughter Choose a College

For anyone who has lived through the process of supporting their son or daughter in the search for a college, it is a truly exciting, perplexing and tiring endeavor. It’s also an opportunity to watch values in action at the various institutions as well as with your own child as they wrestle with what is to them a monumental choice.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:46:18-05:00March 24th, 2009|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|2 Comments

Leadership Caffeine™ for the Week of March 22, 2009

One of the great things about my view on innovation is that it’s not the sole domain of the engineers, researchers and technologists. My definition of innovation might invite a bit of controversy, but it allows me to extend it to everyone and every function in an organization. There are no boundaries that limit where innovation can take place. The faster you get people focused on problem-solving and in the mindset of “seizing opportunities,” the more effective you will be at pushing fear out the door in favor of value creating activities. It’s time to push the “GO” button on your innovation machine.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:46:19-05:00March 22nd, 2009|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|4 Comments

“It’s Simple” and The Six C’s that Enable High Performance

Sometimes we learn lessons in interesting ways. I learned the power of "keeping things simple" in an amusing but instructive manner from an early mentor at Panasonic. For leaders looking to manage complexity during these difficult times, I offer my own Six Power Tools for keeping things simple and driving high performance.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:46:22-05:00March 18th, 2009|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|0 Comments

Leadership Caffeine™ for the Week of March 16, 2009

Your weekly dose of Leadership Caffeine offers reminders and tips for improving communications, engaging your team members and helping knock down obstacles. Oh, and take a second sip of the iced coffee and spend a few minutes thinking about how you might leverage your firm's values as powerful leadership tools.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:46:23-05:00March 15th, 2009|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|1 Comment

What’s Your High Performance Team Experience?

I love to talk with people that have led or been part of a high performance team (HPT). Their enthusiasm is palpable. These individuals have been to the promised land of corporate collaboration and achievement for a brief period in time and they are interested in going back. Unfortunately, my own formal and informal research indicates that only 30% of professionals surveyed would agree that they have been part of a high performance team. If you've been a part of this 30%, the other 70% of your peers would love to hear your story!

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:46:26-05:00March 11th, 2009|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|4 Comments

Leadership Caffeine™ for the Week of March 8, 2009

Welcome back for this week’s double-shot of leadership motivation. I’m taking my leadership cues this week from Michael Beers, a Harvard Professor with a forthcoming book: High Commitment, High Performance: How to Build a Resilient Organization for Sustained Advantage. While I’m not certain that a Harvard Professor is the first one that I seek out to help me lead my way out of a crisis, I like what he has to say. Mr. Beer’s focus is on building high performance teams and organizations on the back of what he describes as high commitment leaders.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:46:29-05:00March 8th, 2009|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|0 Comments

Management Excellence Blog Named to Alltop!

OK, pardon my excitement, but I was thrilled to learn the other day that my blog, Management Excellence, was named to Alltop in the Leadership category! In case you are not familiar with Alltop, it is is a collection of “the latest stories from the best sites and blogs that cover a topic.” I am honored to be among the “best” in the leadership category on this great site!

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:46:30-05:00March 7th, 2009|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|0 Comments