I’ve just completed a two-day retreat with a fast-growing leadership team. They scored themselves at the lowest levels we’ve seen on our Team Dynamics Survey. Rarely do we see a leadership team as dysfunctional as this one. Their unique products and growing revenues were papering over many huge cracks and barely holding them together. […]
Read post »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! […]
Read post »Early in my career, I reported to Harold, a leader who proudly described his MBE approach – “management by exception.” “If you haven’t heard from me, that’s a good sign,” he explained. “That means I think you’re doing just fine. I only deal with the exceptions. I look for problems and people that need correcting. […]
Read post »At our youngest daughter’s sixth birthday party, a five year- old boy hit Vanessa on the head. Asked to apologize, he politely refused: “Mr. Clemmer, I don’t apologize unless I see teeth marks or blood.” Many managers don’t realize the problems they’re creating unless they see teeth marks or blood. The most insensitive managers are […]
Read post »About 10 years ago we customized a series of leadership training workshops for a large company. Over the next few years nearly 1,000 supervisors and managers went through the two-day workshops. Ratings were high and participants reported numerous positive outcomes and benefits from attending. However, senior executives didn’t participate and we weren’t able to get […]
Read post »Is your organization using a “spray and pray” approach to training and development? What kind of return are you getting on your investment? Michael Beer is Cahners-Rabb Professor of Business Administration, Emeritus at Harvard Business School. He and his colleagues are working on a paper focused on “The Great Training Robbery.” They’re finding that some […]
Read post »Would you like to: Leverage team and organizational strengths for peak performance Integrate major change efforts and development initiatives Build a foundation for significant and sustained culture change Re-energize and refocus the executive team Build cascading change coalitions and robust implementation infrastructure Last week I delivered a 60 minute webinar on Executive Team Building and […]
Read post »A long list of studies shows that 50 – 70% of leadership, culture, and organization change and development efforts fail. For example, a Harvard Business Review article by Michael Beer and Nitin Nohria on “Cracking the Code of Change” concludes, “the brutal fact is that about 70% of all change initiatives fail.” These efforts typically […]
Read post »