There’s another excellent article in this month’s Harvard Business Review on harnessing the power of highly engaged people. Professor of leadership, Douglas Ready, and PhD student, Emily Truelove, report on how companies like the beauty retailer Sephora, luxury hotel chain Four Seasons, and French food giant Danone, came through hard times stronger than ever. In […]
Read post »The cover article in the December issue of Harvard Business Review reminded me of this powerful little story: A scout leader was trying to lift a fallen tree from the path. His pack gathered around to watch him struggle. “Are you using all your strength?” one of the scouts asked. “Yes!” was the exhausted and […]
Read post »I was just talking with a CEO Client about the development work we’ve been doing with his team. This led to a discussion about the state of our businesses. His company is doing fairly well during these uncertain times. He asked about our business. I told him that we saw many organizations cut back sharply […]
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 »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 »“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 »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 »We regularly review our seven Timeless Leadership Principles in our workshops while participants assess how well they feel they’re doing with each one, and which of the Principles they’d most like to improve. The one that scores number one or two on participant priority lists for improvement is Mobilizing and Energizing. Supervisors, managers, and executives […]
Read post »Tomorrow is June 1 – my favorite month in our garden and around Southern Ontario. It’s also the month when seasonal change is sharpest with the beginning of summer in the Northern Hemisphere and the beginning of winter in the Southern Hemisphere. This brings to mind the popular song, “To Everything There is a Season.” […]
Read post »I’ve been an avid reader of Harvard Business Review for over 35 years. It’s often filled with leading edge research, thoughtful observations, and useful approaches to personal, team, and organization leadership. Every few months an issue like May’s comes along bulging with lots of great articles that I file in my electronic database. The regular […]
Read post »Failure. Is it temporary or permanent? Is it an experience or who you are? Do you learn from it or get crushed by it? Do you get traumatized, bounce back, or grow and become better off? The April issue of the Harvard Business Review is entitled “The Failure Issue: How to Understand It, Learn From […]
Read post »During my e-mail exchanges with Jeff Liker we agreed on the critical role leadership and culture play in boosting or blocking major organizational change and improvement efforts (“Lasting Organizational Change Balances Doing and Being”) Jeff is Professor of Industrial and Operations Engineering at the University of Michigan and the author of numerous books on how […]
Read post »The messenger must be the message. The most effective communication is face-to-face. But the most believable communication is behavior. We would all much rather see than hear a sermon. Many well intentioned managers lead change or improvement efforts that are all about changing everyone else while they carry on pretty much as before. They’re preaching […]
Read post »I recently had a career discussion with a sharp and ambitious young family friend who has been working for five years for a large multinational company. In his late twenties, he’s now finishing up his MBA and looking for more growth and development than his company is currently providing. High potential young professionals like him […]
Read post »Has your executive or management team fallen into a few of the traps identified in my last blog post? If so, you’re in good company. Those common team traps are highly interconnected. Getting out of them takes a fair bit of work and approaches unique to each team. Following is a menu of resources and […]
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 »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 »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 […]
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