The cover article in the latest issue of Harvard Business Review focuses on “Creating a Purpose-Driven Organization.” Business school professors Robert Quinn and Anjan Thakor report “when an authentic purpose permeates business strategy and decision making, the personal good and the collective good become one. Positive peer pressure kicks in, and employees are re-energized. Collaboration […]
Read post »A past Client and long time subscriber sent me an e-mail recalling the successful work we’d done together years ago. He was at the centre of the work we and the CEO were doing on culture and leadership development. They went on to become named as a Top 100 Employer. Part of his e-mail focused […]
Read post »Last November I began delivering a series of half-day leadership development workshops (part of their ongoing "management forums" series) for City of Guelph supervisors and managers. This is a rare treat to work with a group of learning leaders just 30 minutes from my home in Kitchener, Ontario. Given our close proximity we pulled out […]
Read post »When I moved down the street from a grocery store job to a career in sales that eventually led me into this field, the president of the company made a comment that became a career goal and life beacon for me: “When you love what you’re doing, you never have to work again.” This […]
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 »Failing to understand, believe, and share a sense of urgency for why higher levels of customer service – or other organizational transformations are needed – is a major reason the failure rate for change and renewal efforts hovers around 60 – 75%. Today’s younger generations of workers have an even higher need to buy-in to […]
Read post »My last blog post (The Why Generation) argued for investing much more time and effort in getting today’s younger generations of workers to understand and buy-in to why changes are needed in the programs, products, or services they support or provide. Strong and continuous education and communications is critical. If you’re leading efforts to improve […]
Read post »3D is all the rage today. Movies like Avatar take us to a new level of realism. TV manufacturers are furiously announcing new 3D systems. Apple has reportedly filed patents for special 3D glasses technology. Adding the third dimension of depth to a movie brings us up close and puts us into the action. Are […]
Read post »There’s an epidemic of frantic busyness, multi-tasking, project overload, way too many goals, and tyranny of the urgent. An old folk saying reminds us “the hurrier I go the behinder I get.” A theme running through many recent blog postings has been the critical need to be more focused, disciplined, and strategic with our personal, […]
Read post »As I was preparing to facilitate a senior management team retreat and planning session I came across an excellent Harvard Business Review article on the huge problem of frantic busyness and priority overload. This was especially timely since the executive team was debating how they’ll deal with a long list of urgent projects, goals, and […]
Read post »Last weekend was perfect weather to clean up our perennial garden. After a few days of much needed heavy rains, the sun was shining again. The garden was springing back to life with plenty of green shoots (sadly, the deer and rabbits did chew off a few) and vigorous growth. So it was time to […]
Read post »Continuing the theme of meetings, here’s a great list of suggestions from Seth Godin’s March 27, 2009 blog post, “Getting serious about your meeting problem.” : • Understand that all problems are not the same. So why are your meetings? Does every issue deserve an hour? Why is there a default length? • Schedule meetings […]
Read post »Last week’s blog on Engage Younger Workers or Bore and Lose Them got me thinking further about how meetings most clearly showcase the organizational or even division/department’s mini-culture. I was running a two-day offsite planning retreat recently where the disconnect between the culture the leadership team wanted to build and their group behavior was huge. […]
Read post »Experiences in the past few months are clearly trying to tell me to review the keys to process management in this issue. Problems with processes have featured prominently in a number of my workshops and management retreats. Much of the ongoing consulting and organizational coaching work we’re doing at The CLEMMER Group is currently centered […]
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