Values
Strategy Under Siege
Culture Challenge: Peter Drucker famously noted that “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” My experience is that Drucker is correct. One of the more straightforward ways I’ve observed that phenomenon is when a large change initiative is launched by management. For example, installing a new, complex, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. While leadership and employees may […]
Accrue Respect
First Manage: To be a good leader, you must first become a good manager. To do that, you must earn and accrue respect from the folks you manage. After all, the people give you permission to be a leader, not your position on the organization chart. Education Leadership is a learned skill. It seems to […]
What Do We Expect?
How You Play The Game: When I was a boy, I learned that we play to win, but how we play the game is more important than winning. If I was caught cheating I was out of the game. I learned a similar lesson when negotiating with other people. The lesson was to negotiate the […]
These Three Things
In a recent leadership group meeting, I was prompted to think a bit more about common leadership traits. I have settled on what I believe to be common leadership traits based on the great leaders I know personally. And of course, I added a few leaders about whom I’ve read but who I do not […]
The Unexamined
Curiosity: In a previous post, I wrote about curiosity and its importance to leadership. I find that many of our organizational policies, procedures, and cultural norms go unexamined. I want to expand on the topic of curiosity a bit more. What drives me to do so is ruminating on my experience with classes I facilitate […]
Hire for Attitude
Attitude ~ Values: In a recent speech to a group of business leaders, Peter Salvati, CEO of DPR Construction, said that he makes sure his team “Hires for attitude, trains for skills” And of course, he does the same when he is hiring or promoting his leadership team. To my way of thinking, attitude is […]
The Resistance
Engagement: I was slightly amused at the recent NY Times anonymous editorial about the “Internal Resistance” to the President’s leadership. “Welcome to our world,” I said out loud to no one in particular. They are lucky that this is out in the open. We in the private sector rarely get such a heads up! According […]
Two Levels Up
Autonomy: I hear a lot of discussion these days about keeping employees engaged in the workplace. Let me explain what employee engagement has to do with “two levels up.” We know, from the research by Daniel Pink and others, that knowledge workers require three things to be fully engaged at work: Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose. […]
What Is a True Patriot?
Happy Fourth! As those who read my newsletter know, we are on vacation in Europe at the time of the publication of this blog post. And while I usually shy away from any political topics in this business blog, I think it is appropriate to pause and think about patriotism on this day. I believe […]
Simplify
Why Simplify? A leader must be able to make the complex simple. That is not easy to do — on several fronts! In many (most?) organizations today, our employees know more about the details of their jobs than their leaders do. This is inevitable in our modern world and will only become more true as time […]