Leadership Archives

Leadership Caffeine™-An Effective Leader’s Resolutions are Calendar Blind

As a leader, you cannot afford to fall victim to the boom and bust cycle of annual resolutions. Rather, your challenge is a daily one, requiring you to manage your practices and habits in a program of perpetual self-improvement. Of course, identifying the right improvements requires you to have a real-time feedback system and the ability to keep your ego in check while as objectively as possible processing the daily evidence on your own performance.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:41:20-05:00December 21st, 2009|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|5 Comments

Leadership Caffeine™: A Mostly Thoughtful Guide to Surviving Bad Leadership Days

Even the most dedicated and experienced of leaders will admit that there are more than a few days when they wonder whether it might not be a lot less stressful to hang up their leadership cleats in favor of an individual contributor role. Like marriage, not every day as a leader is filled with wine and roses. There are many days when you will drive home from work wondering whether you truly accomplished anything, and others when you will feel like you just took a few steps in the wrong direction.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:41:31-05:00December 7th, 2009|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|16 Comments

December Leadership Development Carnival

There are few things that I let get in the way of a Monday Morning Leadership Caffeine post, but today's Leadership Development Carnival, guest hosted by Mark Stelzner, author of the Inflexion Point blog and Principal at Inflexion Advisors, is one of them. Instead of your usual cup of motivation, you get the entire carafe today with many familiar and some new voices chiming in on all manner of fascinating leadership and business topics.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:41:32-05:00December 7th, 2009|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|0 Comments

My Personal Journey Towards Building Better Leaders

Note from Art: I’m taking time out from my usual blogging activities today to share with you a bit about the background and approach of my new program and website: Building Better Leaders. After conducting more discussions than I can count with professionals in product management, project management, marketing, new first-time leaders, those interested in leading, technical professionals thrust into leadership, I decided to create something that would solve the problems of: practical content, cost, access, sustainability and guidance. Enter Building Better Leaders.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:41:37-05:00December 2nd, 2009|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|3 Comments

Leadership Caffeine™: Five Simple Suggestions for Minimizing Management Myopia

Participate in or monitor enough management team conversations and you will invariably conclude that it’s darned hard for these teams to spend quality time discussing external issues. The gravitational pull of internal “stuff” is overwhelming and resists all attempts to move the conversation to topics outside of the firm’s four walls, preferring instead to keep managers focused on the nuances of their own operations. The result is a self-fulfilling management myopia where the view on the world is grossly limited to the immediate surroundings…and ranges as far as the eyes can see outside conference room windows.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:41:41-05:00November 29th, 2009|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|10 Comments

Leadership 2009 Style-What We Learned

Mix one part global economic crisis with ample quantities of uncertainty and ambiguity. Stir in two-parts ever-changing global competition and a dash of geopolitical instability and you’ll end up with something that looks and feels a lot like the world of today, complete with the mild aftertaste of fear. You’ll also end up with a remarkable living leadership laboratory, where the best leaders are rediscovering the importance of leadership blocking and tackling while simultaneously developing the new skills and approaches required in this complex environment.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:41:43-05:00November 24th, 2009|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|12 Comments

Leader, Who’s Sitting at Your Table?

Once again, Mom is proven right. You become the company that you keep. Surround yourself with intelligent, aggressive individuals comfortable in professionally articulating their perspectives and taking accountability for both their words and their actions, and you will flourish.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:41:47-05:00November 19th, 2009|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|15 Comments

Leadership Caffeine™-Develop the Courage to Derail the Bad Decision Train

The “bad decision train” is difficult to stop or derail once it gets moving. It seems to take extra-ordinary courage to admit that you are wrong. A combination of ego and fear often prevail, driving us to go all-in when we should fold and walk away. While the instinct to pursue bad decisions with more bad decisions might be difficult to overcome, it is critical that leaders fight this tendency by fostering a culture that encourages teams and individuals to challenge decisions, particularly when new facts and lessons learned begin to point towards a different direction.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:41:52-05:00November 9th, 2009|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|8 Comments

Once More On the SoapBox: Strategy and the Leader

There is no more mystical and in some cases mythical concept in all of business than the word, "Strategy." Perhaps because it has been long claimed by academics and expensive consultants and bandied about exclusively by executives in boardrooms, while everyone else waits for the CEO to come down from on high with the clay tablets and of course, clarity, firmly in hand. Here are some suggestions for beginning to take the myth out of strategy in your organization:

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:41:55-05:00November 4th, 2009|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|2 Comments

Leadership Caffeine™-Bringing Confidence Back

Confidence is a powerful force in the workplace for individuals and for teams. It’s that extra-added something that allows us to look at the world through eyes that see opportunities to pursue, challenges that exist to be met and new heights within easy reach. Unfortunately, given the beat-down that most of the world has been taking for the past year or two, confidence is in short supply in the workplace. It's time to bring confidence back.

By Art Petty|2024-08-08T13:42:58-05:00November 2nd, 2009|1,770 Legacy Leadership Caffeine and Management Articles|11 Comments