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Tagged with 'Peter Drucker'

Leadership Team Dynamics: Culture Change Begins Here

  We did a series of focus groups, interviews, and surveys within a division of a large company to help Chris, the division manager, determine why their culture wasn’t performing at the level he wanted. We found that the shortfalls in the division’s levels of engagement, service, and productivity reflected the leadership team’s effectiveness. Their […]

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Quotes to Note on Purposeful Leadership

As mentioned in my recent post, On Purpose: What Condition is Your Mission In?, spirit and meaning are missing in many organizations. The huge disconnect between our existential search for a deeper purpose and the empty words of mission statements is a major factor behind The Great Resignation.   “Those who are able to inspire […]

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Are you Feeling the Love?

Early in my career, I worked in a company with an inspiring and passionate CEO. He often said, “If you love what you’re doing, you never have to work again.” Love that concept! Most of us hate work. It’s a four-letter word. Hard work is why I left the family farm. Whenever a job started […]

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Reshaping the Leadership and Culture Development Puzzle

In his 19th Century Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, Ebenezer Cobham Brewer writes, “Euclid, having opened a school of mathematics at Alexandria, was asked by King Ptolemy whether he could explain his art to him in a more compendious manner. ‘Sire,’ said the geometrician, ‘there is no royal road to learning.'” The timeless quest for […]

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Delegation Dilemma: Are You Trapped and Overrun by Monkeys?

The senior and middle managers frustrated the General Manager of a large organization. She felt managers weren’t using their time effectively. “Many of them are managing a level or two below their position. They’re trapped in micromanaging daily details. They need to be more strategic with their time and learn to delegate.” She wanted delegation […]

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Thoughts That Make you go Hmmm…from Peter Drucker

Photo – Jeff McNeill CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons As mentioned in my last post, I’ve been a lifelong follower of Peter Drucker’s seminal work on personal, team, and organization effectiveness. After writing that post, I went into my research database and found I’ve filed over 130 of his quotes, articles, and excerpts. Here […]

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Hinge of History: A Major Leadership and Culture Transformation is Underway

The 10th annual Global Peter Drucker Forum just wrapped up in Vienna, his birthplace. Forbes senior contributor, Steve Denning entitled his report on the session, A Major Transformation of Management Is Already Underway. The first management book I ever read way back when was Drucker’s The Effective Executive. Published in 1966 (I didn’t read it […]

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Thoughts That Make You Go Hmmm on… Growing and Developing Others

Friend and fellow consultant and speaker, Donald Cooper and I found out after the fact that we were working independently with “John” a hard driving restaurant entrepreneur. John had rapidly built one restaurant into four highly successful locations with an innovative new concept and his fanatical attention to details. I got involved with helping John […]

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5 Questions to Cut Through the Coaching Clutter

In the past four years the number of books on coaching available at Amazon has grown by 50% — from just under 30,000 to over 45,000. This reflects the growing understanding that effective coaching has a huge impact on individual, team, and organization performance. But this also shows there’s an overwhelming assortment of coaching theories, […]

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Thoughts That Make You Go Hmmm on… The Purpose/Profit Paradox

“Prosperity is only an instrument to be used, not a deity to be worshipped.” – Calvin Coolidge, 30th American president “If a for-profit entity is only profit seeking, then you’re not going to be a long-term profitable company. That’s kind of a paradox of business, I think.” – Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft “The Great Recession […]

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Focusing on Strengths Webinar: What Extraordinary Leaders Do Differently

Peter Drucker first advised building strengths in the 1960s and it became a constant theme throughout his work. In 1990 psychology researcher and professor, Martin Seligman, published his book, Learned Optimism, and launched the positive psychology movement. In 2001, Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton, their book, Now, Discover Your Strengths. I read, reread, and cited […]

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Thoughts That Make You Go Hmmm on… Agile, Learning Organizations

“The learning organization can mean two things, it can mean an organization which learns and/or an organization which encourages learning in its people. It should mean both.” – Charles Handy, “The Age of Unreason“, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, pp 225 “Feedback is the lifeblood of the organization — the exchange of information that lets […]

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Fit the Pieces Together For Integrated Team and Organization Development

I’ve used this slide for some time to show a big reason for the 50 – 70% failure rate of organization change and improvement efforts. It shows that many of these common change and improvement initiatives are disconnected and don’t fit together to create a cohesive picture. “Fad surfing in the C Suite” wastes scarce […]

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Thoughts that Make You Go Hmmm on … Leadership Team Effectiveness

Antidotes to “6 Dysfunctional Leadership Team Behaviors…“ Make sure everybody in your boat is rowing and not drilling holes when you’re not looking. – Anonymous The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don’t play together, the […]

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New Survey Showing a Strengths Revolution in our Workplaces

In 2001 only 2 out of 10 people reported that they had a chance to do what they do best every day at work. In 2015 this more than doubled to 5 out of every 10 people. Michelle McQuaid is an honorary fellow at Melbourne University’s Graduate School of Education, holds a Masters in Applied […]

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Is Your Culture Built on a Weak Foundation?

In the opening lines of the chapter entitled, “Making Strength Productive” in his 1967 book The Effective Executive, the “father of modern management,” Peter Drucker writes, “to make strength productive is the unique purpose of organization. It cannot, of course, overcome the weakness with which each of us is abundantly endowed. But it can make […]

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Building Leadership Strengths 2 – 3 Times More Effective Than Fixing Weaknesses

In a chapter entitled “Making Strength Productive” in his 1967 book The Effective Executive, the “father of modern management,” Peter Drucker writes, “You cannot build performance on weaknesses. You can build only on strengths. To focus on weakness is not only foolish; it is irresponsible. It is a misuse of a human resource as what […]

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Asset-Based Community Development is Part of Emerging Strengths-Based Movement

I had lunch recently with Derek Alton to discuss his new role as Campaign Animator at the Tamarack Institute for Community Engagement. Derek is a sharp, creative, and ambitious young innovator who is very driven to fulfill Tamarack’s mission of “collaboratively creating vibrant communities by engaging learning leaders.” I’ve stayed in touch with Tamarack’s co-founding […]

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Don’t be Seduced by the Dark Side

Recently I had a coaching session with an operations vice president to review her personal development plan, following her participation in our Extraordinary Leader workshop. In that session she received feedback from 19 peers, direct reports, and others throughout her organization. Joanne rated herself very low on Builds Relationships and Collaboration and Teamwork competencies. Everyone […]

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10th Anniversary of Publishing “The Leader Letter”

One of the most celebrated anniversaries is birthdays. This month is the 10th birthday of my monthly newsletter The Leader Letter.I published The Leader Letter in April 2003 to coincide with and announce the publication of my fifth book, The Leader’s Digest: Timeless Principles for Team and Organization Success. I signed thousands of pre-ordered books […]

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