Here are especially vital findings and powerful observations about just what it takes to build a peak performance culture. These are drawn from Harvard Business School professor, James Heskett’s new book, The Culture Cycle: How to Shape the Unseen Force That Transforms Performance: “Culture really matters. As Lou Gerstner wrote, reflecting on his experiences in […]
Read post »John Kotter and James Heskett’s classic book, Corporate Culture and Performance, is an organization development classic. The book provided solid evidence of the payoffs that come from adaptive cultures and the negative power of unadaptive cultures. Adaptability is absolutely critical today. As change tsunamis relentlessly sweep the globe, adaptive organizations are getting stronger and unadaptive […]
Read post »The short video clip Lost Generation continues to be a big hit with keynote and workshop audiences as we discuss our choices to Lead, Follow, or Wallow when faced with challenging changes or setbacks. It features a poem written by Jonathon Reed for a “U @ 50” contest sponsored by the American Association of Retired […]
Read post »It was an eerie coincidence! Maybe it’s because Halloween is about to pounce on us … I had just read my old colleague Jack Zenger, and his colleagues Joe Folkman and Scott Edinger’s excellent article in this month’s issue of Harvard Business Review. Entitled “Making Yourself Indispensible”, the article builds on the strong research and […]
Read post »Author and futurist Alvin Toffler’s powerful phrase “hinge of history” is an apt descriptor for our times. Our highly integrated global village is going through huge and massive shifts. We’re now in the midst of a major pivot point. The “Shift Happens“video (my last post) vividly illustrates these dramatic and accelerating changes. History teaches that […]
Read post »Last week I ran a highly customized Peak Performance Leadership workshop and facilitated a strategy session in beautiful Colorado Springs. It was the perfect place to discuss climbing to higher levels of personal, team, and organization performance — especially during these fast changing and turbulent times. We also got to experience their first heavy snowfall […]
Read post »I just came across a Corporate Executive Board (CEB) study showing the incredible penalties and pay-offs of good and bad communication practices. A survey of 300,000 employees shows that open and honest communication pays huge dividends to companies with transparent cultures. A CEB poll found that nearly half of executive teams don’t get critical information […]
Read post »The American author, poet, and psychologist, Bonaro W. Overstreet observed “October is a symphony of permanence and change.” Isn’t that so true of life? It’s certainly the paradoxical balance seen in strong leaders and found in peak performance cultures. This month in the northern hemisphere trees put on a colorful display as they prepare for […]
Read post »Many organizations are implementing significant overhauls of their IT systems. But many of these projects are poorly implemented. This leads to sizeable cost overruns, missed deadlines, disrupted operations, unhappy customers, and stressed out employees. This month’s issue of Harvard Business Review carries an article entitled Why Your IT Project May Be Riskier Than You Think. […]
Read post »Work overload, 24/7 availability, stretched work weeks, and overflowing in-boxes are overwhelming most professionals and managers. But it doesn’t have to be that way. You can be the less stressed out exception. You can Lead, rather than Follow or Wallow. Linda Duxbury, a professor at the Sprott School of Business at Carleton University was recently […]
Read post »Strong management teams fiercely debate options, challenge each other’s thinking, and find the optimum approaches hidden in the grey area between both sides of tough issues. That takes trust, emotional intelligence, and courage. I am currently coaching a couple of lower performing executive groups struggling to “up their game” and become strong leadership teams. One […]
Read post »Today’s organizations are spanning geographic and departmental boundaries. Increasingly people — especially white collar professionals — are on teams whose members don’t all work in the same location. Telecommuting and cross-functional/regional/country collaboration are adding to this growing trend. The international training company, AchieveGlobal, has just published a study looking at leading virtual teams. Among its […]
Read post »“What we expect, that we find.” – Aristotle, Greek philosopher, student of Plato, and teacher of Alexander the Great “Much of life is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you think the worst of people and show it, they will often prove you right. If the systems we design are based on the principle that people cannot […]
Read post »I don’t recall how this Native American fable ended up in my database: A native brave came upon an eagle’s egg which had somehow fallen unbroken from an eagle’s nest. Unable to find the nest, the brave put the egg in the nest of a prairie chicken where it was hatched by the brooding mother […]
Read post »As students head back to school this is a good reminder to check our balance and leadership learning. It’s so easy to lose our personal, team, and organizational balance and not recognize that it’s happening. Have you become trapped as your team’s chief technical problem solver? Are work days an endless series of fighting fire […]
Read post »This week kicks off a new academic year in much of the Northern Hemisphere. As classes resume, here’s a critical question for our ongoing personal, team, and organizational effectiveness: is learning a phase of life or a way of life? September, from the Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berry Learning is to leadership as […]
Read post »Organizational culture development is a complex topic with many intertwined leadership components. Establishing a peak performance culture in what’s sometimes called a “green field” situation has different challenges than changing an established culture (sometimes called “brown field”). In response to my July blog, RIM/Blackberry is at a Critical Leadership Crossroad, a subscriber sent me this […]
Read post »Last week I finally saw the famous musical My Fair Lady based on George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion. I took our fair daughter, Jennifer, to see My Fair Lady at the Shaw Festival in beautiful Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. We thoroughly enjoyed it. I’ve wanted to see the show for years as a result of reading and […]
Read post »As reviewed in my last post, Beyond Performance is an excellent new book chockfull of solid research on the key elements to successful leadership and organization development. Here are a few of highlights of Keller and Price’s findings: “What we might think of as the usual suspects — inadequate resources, poor planning, bad ideas, unpredictable […]
Read post »This is an outstanding book that should become a classic for its extensive research on leadership and organization effectiveness. It’s based on “surveys on the drivers of organizational performance and health from more than 600,000 respondents from 500 organizations across the globe, surveys on the experience of transformational change from more than 6,800 CEOs and senior executives, reviews of […]
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