Inspiration: The voters believed that President George H.W. Bush had the experience, judgment, integrity, and a steady hand for his office. He knew “how” to get things done. However, he struggled with, in his words, “the vision thing.” Every leader knows that to inspire people to follow them, they need a compelling vision. Simon Sinek called it the “why.” Nietzsche …
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 me that we forget that …
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. Before we can give control …
Managers: The saying I grew up with was, “Leaders make sure we are doing the right thing. Managers make sure we do it right.” In a modern corporation, the desire is to move leadership to every level of the organization (Intent Based Leadership—IBL). Therefore, managers are being asked to broaden their view to include managing unrelenting change in our internal …
Sustainable Advantage: I don’t know how we can claim we have a sustainable competitive advantage unless, that is, that we believe that advantage to be our ability to learn faster than the competition. Technology is moving much too fast for us to think that some sort of product or service is really our competitive advantage. But continuous learning, a willingness …
Mission First: But people always. Here’s my takeaway from the mantra: “Mission first, people ALWAYS.” It is true that we are always dealing with people. Ourselves, our leadership team, our employees, our customers and our vendors — all are people. At least for now! I’ve long said that we need to put our employees first. I know from experience that …
Planning: I’m told that Benjamin Franklin said, “Failing to plan is planning to fail.” Planning is critical in order to move an organization toward achievement of the vision. In the same way that a map is not the territory, a business plan is not the way the market is or will be at the time of execution. It is our …
According to Gallup The numbers rarely change. In the U.S., the annual Gallup survey shows that about 70% of our employees are NOT engaged. Meaning, they are putting in no extra effort to move the company forward. Employee engagement is the engine of productivity. Job #1 The CEO, Founder, Owner of a company has one main job and that is …
The Chef’s Creation Variety is frequently a positive goal to achieve when doing things such as organizing your life, building an organization, creating a mastermind group, or developing a high functioning team. However, sometimes, we can miss the mark. We can overdo things. I started thinking about this when my wife made a comment while we were out to dinner …
I’ll be frank, I don’t understand the question that comes up so frequently in my circles — “How do we manage the Millennials?” To me, it seems really straightforward. Somehow, people have confused themselves. You manage projects, you lead people. Try leading Millennials instead of managing them. Managing vs Leading There are several ways of distinguishing between leading and managing. The …