high-performance Archives

Art of Managing-Kick Mediocrity to the Curb in Pursuit of Extraordinary

Mediocre is on display daily in too many areas of our society and in too many of our businesses. From the boss who just doesn’t care to our government seemingly barely functioning to the miserable help-lines of too many firms to the slow gait…the shuffle of retail workers at organizations that definitely don’t care, ordinary and average are epidemic. Here are 8 ideas to help you kick mediocrity to the curb in pursuit of extraordinary on your team:

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:28:31-05:00May 6th, 2013|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|10 Comments

New Leader Tuesday-7 Ideas to Strengthen Accountability on Your Team

Accountability. Tattoo it on your forearm. Imprint it on your brain. Repeat it three times every morning. And then assert it all day long. Here are 7 ideas to help you strengthen the culture of accountability on your team:

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:28:36-05:00April 9th, 2013|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|1 Comment

Just One Thing-Strive to Be a Better Team Participant

There are shelves of books and countless blog posts out there on improving team performance. Last I checked, there isn’t much for us to consume on the topic of improving our performance as team and project participants. Here are 12 ideas on to improve your participation and potentially raise the performance of everyone around you.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:30:54-05:00July 5th, 2012|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|0 Comments

Leadership Caffeine™: Do You See Beauty or Blemishes?

If you’ve ever worked for or around someone who is an expert critic…one of those individuals who can look at a masterpiece and spot a flaw, you know how demoralizing the experience can be. They look at beautiful pictures or great outcomes and focus on describing the flaws. Here are 5 ideas for improving performance by overcoming your own tendency to look for the blemishes.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:34:05-05:00June 27th, 2011|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|3 Comments

Leadership Caffeine™: Developing as a Senior Contributor

I regularly use the label “Senior Contributor” (SC) to reference a state of management maturity that tends to exist somewhere between upper mid-level management or senior knowledge worker and the executive layer. The SC is a professional (manager or individual contributor) on the brink of executive qualifications and someone that has displayed effective formal and informal leadership skills, value-creating critical and strategic thinking abilities, credible executive presence and a strong operating and quality orientation.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:38:25-05:00July 11th, 2010|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|2 Comments

Getting Out of Your Own Way

Almost without exception, the primary reason for sub-optimizing in your career and in life can be seen every morning staring back at you in the mirror. Notice that it’s not your boss, your spouse or significant other or your parents or friends. It’s you. How do we overcome our own "going through the motions" inertia and reach or return to a level of high performance?

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:41:49-05:00November 17th, 2009|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|7 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

The Counterintuitive Nature of Management Excellence

It takes no management skill whatsoever to spend a fortune building up clicks and it definitely takes no skill to slash budgets, cut headcount, freeze programs and hunker down and wait out the storm. It does take remarkable management courage and skill to run against the crowd and conventional wisdom by investing in strategic initiatives and talent during tough times and resisting the temptation to chase mythical fortunes during boom times.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:48:19-05:00December 2nd, 2008|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|2 Comments

In Search of the High Performance Team

I regularly poll my seminar participants and MBA students on their team-focused experiences in the workplace and I am consistently surprised when very few report ever being part of something that they would classify as a “high performance” team. The results of my unscientific polling are all the more surprising given that we live during a time when involvement in short-term projects with individuals across functions is a part of the regular work experience of most professionals.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:48:25-05:00November 11th, 2008|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|2 Comments

In Search of the High Performance Project Team

If the informal survey results above are even remotely close to reality, many/most people have not had the experience to participate on a high performance project team. While successfully managing projects is a tough task, I do not believe that we are dealing with a degree of impossibility. If project success is critical to your organization's advancement, everyone from the CEO on down has a vested interest in ensuring that greater than 10% of the project teams take on the characteristics of a high-performance environment.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:50:20-05:00May 18th, 2008|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|0 Comments