In the last few months I’ve been working with three executive teams to help strengthen team effectiveness and boost their leadership of major culture change and development efforts. One team heads up a large commercial construction company in Western Canada, another is a European based international mining company, and the third are senior partners in […]
Read post »A reader responded to my December “Tips and Techniques for Reviewing, Assessing, Celebrating, and Refocusing” blog with this comment: “Hi Jim, Just like to echo your thoughts on staying focused on successes. For many it has been a tricky year in our global economy. Focused thinking has never been so important. Focus your thinking on […]
Read post »Change is happening way too fast to predict and plan for an uncertain and unknown future. Building a quickly responsive and highly adaptive team and organizational culture is more critical than ever. The core of a built-to-change culture is an energized vision, values, and purpose/mission (it’s the hub of our “Leadership Wheel”) brimming with life […]
Read post »My last post brought a few insights and research on dealing with uncertainty. The post before that was built around Dan Gardner’s excellent new book, Future Babble. It drew parallels with one of his key themes (expert hedgehogs and foxes) by discussing management hedgehogs and leadership foxes. A key difference from management hedgehog’s rigid planning […]
Read post »My last few blog posts dealt with our predictable New Year’s “Silly Season” filled with useless forecasts and predictions. This multi-billion dollar industry is built around our deep insecurity about dealing with uncertainty. But life doesn’t come with any guarantees and nobody knows what triumphs or tragedies await us around the next corner of our […]
Read post »In Dan Gardner’s fascinating new book, Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Fail – and Why We Believe Them Anyway, he cites the research of Professor Philip Tetlock, in dividing the expert forecasters he studied into hedgehogs and foxes. This comes from an essay entitled, “The Hedgehog and the Fox” by political philosopher Isaiah Berlin. The […]
Read post »Once again we face a fresh New Year with countless possibilities stretching out far beyond the horizon. Will this year be filled with triumphs or tragedies? What changes lay ahead? Is the uncertainty daunting or exciting? Are we creating a new earth or witnessing the end of history? Will this be the year of “The […]
Read post »If the "experts" weren’t so serious — and often dire — with their predictions for 2011 and beyond, this could be a highly amusing time of year. Amongst all the holiday festivities we could be entertained — even laughingly regaled — by economists, analysts, futurists, tech experts, sociologists, and marketers with their computer models, colored […]
Read post »While you’re recovering from all the feasting – or looking for some time to yourself – here’s a chance to review the most popular of last year’s 100+ blog posts. The links below will take you directly to the post. Many of the blog posts on this Top 10 list were published last summer. That’s […]
Read post »In the spirit making this a greener Holiday season I am recycling a blog from last year! It’s that exciting week before Christmas when kids cram for their big performance review. Where will the big guy watching from the North Pole mark them on the naughty-nice scale? Will it be enough to get them into […]
Read post »This is a wonderful time of year. The bright lights, cheery music, parties, festive atmosphere, good wishes, and great food add to the fun of the Holidays. It’s a wonderful time for warming our hearts with the love of family and rekindling our spirits with friends. It’s a magical time of year when we even […]
Read post »“By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.” – Confucius, ancient Chinese thinker and social philosopher “… the most successful teams had leaders who actively managed the groups’ learning efforts. Teams that most successfully implemented the […]
Read post »As you look back over the past year and forward to 2011, schedule time to get your team re-energized and re-focused when you get back to work in January. Here are a few ways to do it: Summarize Your 2010 Accomplishments – this can be done as an “Annual Report” with photos, graphs, video clips, […]
Read post »My last blog post looked at using the Holiday Season as a reminder of the importance of reviewing, assessing, celebrating, and refocusing – both at home and at work. Besides energizing us, it’s critical to our ongoing learning and development. In offsite retreats and workshops, management teams agree on how critically important it is for […]
Read post »As we scurry madly into the Holiday Season, the year-end retrospectives are beginning. It’s time to look back on what was and ahead to what can be. This is also what highly effective – and disciplined – management teams do so much more regularly that their mediocre peers. Many management teams have a limited or […]
Read post »The New York Times recently published an in-depth look at the zany – and wildly successful – culture that propelled Southwest Airlines to become the largest U.S. domestic carrier over the past 40 years. Entitled “Pushing 40, Southwest is Still Playing the Rebel,” this entertaining and educational article explains how the company’s very powerful culture […]
Read post »The payoff of all that frenzied flurry of preparations for the Holiday Season can be time for reflection and looking back over the past year. As we look ahead, resolutions to change some of our habits are often a good way to kick off the New Year. But planning isn’t doing. Forming new habits is […]
Read post »My last post reported on fascinating research from the world of honey bees providing profound and practical insights on building highly effective teams. Team effectiveness depends heavily on the team leadership skills of the person heading up the team. Here’s a look at recent and emerging research on team leadership for stronger team building. “Great […]
Read post »Management is about facts, analysis, and issues of the head. Leadership is about intuition, values, and issues of the heart. Logic is the language of management. Imagery is the language of leadership. Imagery is fuelled by metaphors, parables, analogies, stories, and examples. It’s how we’ve learned from each other and passed along our accumulated experiences […]
Read post »The continued increase in registrations for my blog posting notifications and the steady growth in complimentary subscriptions to The Leader Letter (a monthly compilation of my biweekly blogs) leads me to believe that many readers feel they are getting more than they’re paying for from my writing. Because I am a “leadership nerd,” I quite […]
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