For many years, I've had the pleasure and honor of submitting my Leadership Caffeine articles to the monthly Leadership Development Carnival coordinated by the great team at Weaving Influence. This monthly collection of ideas, inspiration, and guidance for all of us has been a must-read and must-share. On days when the Carnival publishes, I grab [...]
In this article, I draw from history lessons to suggest a fresh model and set of skills based on old-school nation-state diplomacy to help today's senior managers and organizational leaders navigate the challenges posed by varying constituent groups in our volatile era.
The economic weather is changing, and it feels like a storm is approaching. Possibly a big one. The question on my mind is, "Will the leadership lessons of the past few years stick?"
There are two issues every person in a leadership role must constantly focus on and work on: (1) who they aspire to be as leaders and (2) how hard they are working at developing their skills as strategists. Anything less than daily work on these issues is a problem.
As you search for new resolutions and ideas to grow and strengthen in your leadership role in the months ahead, here are seven things I encourage you to stop.
What we want as leaders is deep immersion from our team members. Yet, our systems, numbers, and approaches mainly generate transactional involvement. They lack unity of purpose.
What if we led as if lives and livelihoods depended on the outcome? There are some great lessons from the vaccine moon-shot described by Pfizer's CEO Albert Bourla in the latest issue of Harvard Business Review. It's time to put these lessons to work in all of our organizations.
It's easy to swallow the dogma that has emerged around the "Cult of Speed" in our management thinking and teaching. Yet, the pursuit of speed in poorly designed systems exposes weaknesses and often precipitates project, strategy, and even organizational failure. Said simply, raw speed kills. Sometimes you have to tap the brakes and slow down to ultimately move faster.
We've barely scratched the surface of the areas in our organizations where thinking differently is essential for survival and success. Teaming, strategy and problem-solving all loom large and merit this treatment. However, starting with the role and work of leaders and the processes for adding talent to the team and supporting their development are perfect entry points.
Wally Bock and I share thoughts on our favorite leadership and management reads from this year's first quarter on the latest podcast episode.
