Leaders: How Hard are You Thinking About These Two BIG Issues?

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.

The Leader’s Role in Accelerating Strategy Execution

The role of top leaders in guiding strategy creation is well documented. Less understood is that once the strategy is formed and shared, the leader’s actions must focus on minimizing organizational friction—the processes, cultural nuances, and political and personal impediments that threaten the organization’s speed-of-execution.

By |2019-12-22T12:01:56-06:00December 22nd, 2019|Leadership, Leadership Caffeine, Leading Change, Strategy|0 Comments

Why Trickle-Down Strategy Approaches Leave Your Employees Thirsty

Unless you're in a start-up or small business, it's impossible to have everyone in the firm physically "in-the-room" for strategy sessions. However, using a strategy-as-a-continuous-process approach, it is possible and desirable to involve everyone in the work of strategy from ideation to execution. But first, you've got to re-plumb the trickle-down strategy process approach to something significantly more inclusive.

4 Key Starter Ingredients for Successful Strategy Execution

Even a sound strategy process that effectively characterizes the situation and way forward still faces considerable risk in the form of strategy execution. Ultimately, the ideas are relatively easy. It's the work of bringing strategy to life that is difficult. Here are 4 key ingredients you require for successful strategy execution.

Leadership Caffeine™—Leading Your Peers

We tend to reserve our thinking, writing and talking about leadership for the hierarchical relationships. However, peer groups represent great, untapped sources of problem-solving and improvement. There's ample opportunity for you to assert as a leader of this group, if you take the right approach. Here are 7 steps to asserting as a leader of your peers without being perceived as a jerk...

By |2017-07-04T15:39:16-05:00January 24th, 2016|Career, Leadership Caffeine, Strategy|1 Comment

Part 2: Focus, Identity and the High Performance Management Team

While it’s reasonable to think that a group of intelligent, accomplished professionals…all peers, with deep individual expertise in their functional areas might be the stuff of a management dream team, reality suggests that we shouldn’t count on it. Here are two key challenges that must be overcome and 5 ideas to help jump-start senior management team performance:

Strategy-Towards Hypotheses, Experiments, Involvement & Learning

Few would argue that a nimble, quick-to-learn and quick-to-adapt organization is a bad thing. Given the rate of change in our world, those characteristics are increasingly table-stakes for survival and success. Why then has the approach to strategy and the notion of “strategic planning” in so many organizations remained mired in a 1960’s kind of static, top-down event-focused model? Here are six ideas to transform your organization's approach to and effectiveness with strategy.

By |2016-10-22T17:11:32-05:00January 25th, 2012|Leadership, Leading Change, Project Management, Strategy|6 Comments

Management Excellence Book Series: Six Disciplines Execution Revolution with Gary Harpst

I started this book series to share the insights and approaches of some truly sharp people on solving vexing business problems. This particular interview with Gary Harpst, author of, Six Disciplines Execution Revolution and the earlier Six Disciplines for Excellence, taps into Gary's hard won, practical experience and his great ideas on helping small and mid-sized businesses deal with strategy execution. Enjoy the thoughtful, actionable and experience-tested guidance from Gary in our podcast interview!

By |2016-10-22T17:11:45-05:00December 8th, 2010|Leadership, Strategy|0 Comments
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