Leadership Caffeine Archives

Leadership Caffeine™: 7 Odd Ideas to Help You Get Unstuck

While some argue that the natural order of life is towards entropy (a gradual decline into disorder), I would argue that the natural tendency of most humans is towards a kind of comfortable sameness and consistency in their daily lives. The pursuit of different requires more energy than the descent into routine. It is most definitely easier to not change. While comfortable and comforting, routine is the enemy of growth and progress and innovation

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:40:18-05:00March 21st, 2010|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|13 Comments

Leadership Caffeine™-Teach Your Team to Make Better Decisions

If you were to embark upon a rugged and lonely journey to the top of the mountain to ask for enlightenment from the Oracle of Management, I suspect that you would be left with the words “decision-making” to ponder on your long walk back to civilization. And in spite of the lack of a concrete answer from this journey, I’ll throw in my two-cents worth that decision-making is in fact the essence of management. It’s also darned hard to do, difficult to teach and challenging to get right more often than not.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:40:20-05:00March 14th, 2010|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|1 Comment

Leadership Caffeine™-Learning to Lead in the Project-Focused World

The rise of “the project” as an important means of competing and creating value has profound implications for those in leadership roles. Unfortunately, in many cases, the evolution in leadership practices has not kept pace with the needs of project teams or the needs of organizations struggling to develop competence at executing on projects.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:40:27-05:00February 28th, 2010|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|13 Comments

Leadership Caffeine™: Teach, Don’t Tell

I discovered a long time ago that I was much more effective as a leader and as a father (a much harder job to get right!) if I adopted an approach that emphasized teaching over telling. While there are circumstances where telling is appropriate…the battlefield, the operating room, perhaps the football field and a few others that I’m sure that I would think of if given enough time, most people prefer to learn, not to carry out orders.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:40:30-05:00February 22nd, 2010|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|12 Comments

Leadership Caffeine™: It’s Vuja De All Over Again

I’m re-reading Tom Kelley’s outstanding book, “The Ten Faces of Innovation,” based on his experience with design firm IDEO, and came across his wonderful use of the phrase Vuja De (the opposite of that feeling we call Déjà vu) in the chapter on acting as an anthropologist to observe people’s true behavior. With apologies to Yogi Berra for borrowing and twisting his classic phrase, "It's Deja Vu all over again," a little Vuja De in your daily leadership life might just be the prescription to turbocharge team and individual performance.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:40:33-05:00February 15th, 2010|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|11 Comments

The New Employer-Employee Loyalty Prescription

The term and concept of “loyalty” is one that is frequently bandied about in phrases that sound much like, “there is no longer any loyalty to workers,” and “few workers admit any feelings of loyalty to their employers.” The term is also used to contrast today’s transactional workplace relationships with the supposed near utopian state of yesteryear, when our parents and grandparents started at one company early in their lives and ended up retiring from that company 40 years later. The concept of “loyalty” in the workplace is in need of a makeover, complete with a new definition and fresh examples of what constitute reasonable and professional levels of loyalty for and from all parties.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:40:35-05:00February 10th, 2010|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|15 Comments

Leadership Caffeine™: Be Careful How You Value Your Time-15 Minutes Can Make a Big Difference

As leaders, we all know that it’s the little things that count. A word of encouragement might just be rocket fuel for one person while a constructive suggestion serves as the same for another. Alternatively, ignoring or paying superficial attention to a topic that an employee deems important is a guaranteed way to demoralize and deflate a person.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:40:37-05:00February 8th, 2010|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|19 Comments

Leadership Caffeine™-It’s Time to Get Serious About Learning from Your Twenty-Somethings

One of the recurring themes in my writing and teaching activities is the importance of blending the generations in the workplace. I’ve been a cheerleader for this cause for the past few years and I truly believe that good managers everywhere must find opportunities to leverage the unique perspectives of experience, pragmatism and idealism available from this fascinating mix of time travelers. I’ve now moved beyond my polite encouragement for managers to find ways to adapt and cope with what seem to be the foreign habits and foreign viewpoints emanating from the more youthful in the workforce. It's time to get serious about learning and benefitting from this younger generation.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:40:41-05:00January 31st, 2010|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|13 Comments

Leadership Caffeine™-Create Success by Managing Your Response to Failure

No one wants to fail. It’s not something that we typically seek out as part of our personal and organizational character building experience. However, from a distance, we tend to mythologize failure, especially in the context of achieving future success. Certainly, the stories are right and the lessons instructional. They inspire us to persevere, but the failure-leading to-success legends don’t guide us how to respond and cope in the moment.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:40:44-05:00January 25th, 2010|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|17 Comments

Leadership Caffeine™: Learn to Manage Your Team’s Rhythm-6 Ideas for Improving

All teams and groups have a rhythm and natural energy for their tasks that ebb and flow based on a variety of factors, including personal, environmental and seasonal to name a few. As a leader, you should be aware of these cycles that are characterized by either intense creativity, outstanding productivity or on the other extreme, by a slow, plodding march through the days and weeks as if everyone’s feet were encased in clay. It’s your job to help smooth out the highs just a bit and minimize the time spent in the lows.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:41:08-05:00January 11th, 2010|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|8 Comments