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In the topic 'Goals and Priorities'


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Leading Question: Are You a Barrier Buster?

  I was interviewing a leadership team member to prepare for an offsite planning retreat. I asked about the biggest challenges facing their team. She wearily said it was their unfocused frantic pace of activity.  “We have lots of projects, goals, and priorities. We’re constantly making lists and setting action plans. But we seldom see […]

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Overloaded, Overwhelmed, and Too Busy to Learn

  Part Three of a Series on The Tempting Ten Wallow Words (Click to read Parts One and Two)   Does this sound familiar… “Nowadays, people don’t ask you how you are, they say, ‘Are you busy?’ meaning, ‘Are you well?’ If someone actually does ask you how you are, the most cheerful answer, of […]

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Scream Time? Are You Managing, or Managed By, E-mail?

“I’m addicted to e-mail. My endorphins spike when I get a message. And when there are no messages, loneliness and despair overcome me.” Does that comic strip quip feel familiar? Many of us have a love/hate relationship with e-mail. It’s a great tool for staying in touch with many people. But it can easily take […]

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Why Many Planning Sessions Are a Waste of Time and How to Fix Them

I was asked to facilitate an annual strategic planning retreat with a senior leadership team. The CEO sent me their draft agenda for the session. Hmm…oh, oh…. Looking at the typical approach they’ve used before, four common strategic planning problems immediately popped out: The agenda was loaded with about 17 project/operational presentations/reviews and updates. Yikes! […]

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Are You Taking Care of Busyness and Working Overtime?

“How are you doing? Keeping busy?” “Oh, yeah! Busy, busy.” “Great!” How often have you been on both sides of that conversation? It’s become routine. Busyness is highly valued. It’s seen as a measure of our productivity — even our worth. A Science article reports on an experiment by Timothy Wilson, a social psychologist at […]

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Avoid a Speeding Frenzy: 14 Ways to Pace Yourself

One evening I was slowly eating dinner with Heather. She waited and waited for me to finish and finally asked me to hurry up. I told her I was mindfully savoring every bite of the delicious meal. She suggested I “savor faster.” “Fast savoring” is an apt oxymoron for our time. We have an epidemic […]

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Finding the Right Speed in an Ever-Faster World

Simple, succinct, and clear driving instructions. This is solid life advice as well. If day after day of stressful racing around doesn’t manage to actually kill us before our time, it will kill our health, happiness, and effectiveness. I once sat through a scarily high-energy presentation given by a professor specializing in knowledge management. He […]

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Is it About Time: Tips and Techniques to Mind Your Busyness

Brian’s head was starting to throb as he scrolled through the two-dozen new voice and e-mails messages on his phone while walking to his cubicle. Looks like another crazy day in the hamster cage, he muttered to himself. Brian was growing increasingly frustrated. Despite working 50 hours and more per week (with an increasing amount […]

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How Your Leadership Team Can Slow Down to Speed Up

An old fable tells of a farmer with a wagon brimming full of cabbage heading to a new market. He stops for directions and asks, “How far is it to the market?” The man replies, “It’s about an hour if you go slowly. But if you rush, it will take all day.” It was a […]

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How to Boost Strategic Retreat Effectiveness

Getting your leadership team away from daily operations for a few days of reflection and planning is incredibly effective. I am clearly biased since I’ve facilitated so many retreats. When offsite retreats are well designed and facilitated (a bit more bias), the return on investment is exponential. Planning a retreat starts with clarifying 3 or […]

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How Highly Strategic Leadership Teams Rock

The metaphor of putting rocks, pebbles, and sand in a jar has been used for decades to illustrate the time management principle of prioritization. If we start with sand, then marbles, and finally rocks, we likely won’t get many rocks in the jar. And the jar will have gaps and empty spaces. However, if we […]

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4 Strategic Planning Traps and How to Avoid Them

I recently had a call with a CEO about facilitating a strategic planning retreat this fall with 15 of their top leaders. That will be a refreshing change — we’re all fully vaccinated and ready to get together in person again. The CEO sent me their draft agenda for the session. Looking at the fairly […]

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Taking Care of Busyness to Improve Your Business

In 1891, the Anglo-Irish playwright and author, Oscar Wilde, wrote, “We live in the age of the overworked, and the under-educated; the age in which people are so industrious that they become absolutely stupid.” Over 100 years later, the tradition of industrious stupidity continues. During these times of crisis and frantic change, we can get […]

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Culture Compass: A Six-Point Navigational Framework

When we’re mapping a trip to an unfamiliar destination, it’s extremely helpful to be able to zoom out to see the big picture. We can then zoom in for turn by turn details. A big reason up to 70% of change efforts fail is lack of zoomed out planning. Leadership training, succession planning, service/quality improvement, […]

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Stupid Busy: Is Your Leadership Team Overloading Your Organization?

For decades, Harvard professor Michael Porter has studied, written about, and consulted top companies and countries on competitive strategy. He’s found that “the essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.” A recent issue of Harvard Business Review features an article on “Too Many Projects.” Authors Rose Hollister and Michael Watkins write, “Leaders keep […]

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Time to Assess How You’re Using Your Time?

An old fable tells of a farmer with a wagon brimming full of cabbage heading to a new market. He stops for directions and asks, “How far is it to the market?” The man replies, “It’s about an hour if you go slowly but if you rush it will take all day.” It was a […]

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It’s That Time of Year: How Strategic is Your Use of Time?

Imagine a large jar filled to the brim with golf balls. Is it full? What if marbles were slowly poured in as the jar was shaken until no more could be added? Now is it full? How about sand being trickled into the jar as it’s vigorously jiggled? When the sand reaches the brim is […]

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Podcast: Leveraging Leadership Time

I was interviewing a senior executive to prepare for an offsite planning retreat and I asked about the biggest challenges facing the leadership team. He wearily replied it was their unfocused frantic pace of activity.  “We have lots of projects, goals, and priorities. We’re constantly making lists and setting action plans. But we seldom see […]

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Are Urgent Operational Issues Crowding Out Your Strategic Effectiveness?

There are many reasons leadership teams allow their priorities to be badly distorted. Things that matter most — team dynamics, key strategic priorities, and organization change and development efforts — are often crowded out by things that matter least — the crisis du jour or technical problems better solved by those closest to the action. […]

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Overcoming The 7 Deadly Time Traps for Leaders

In a recent Leadership Team Retreat we used a survey based on 7 Deadly Time Traps for Leaders. The biggest trap this team fell into was Acceleration and Overload. This was closely followed by Reactive and Busyness and Coaching Skills. We agreed these three areas were intertwined. These were creating a growing sense of frantic […]

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