I was recently invited to be a guest on a podcast concerning training techniques. That got me reflecting on decades of my journey in this field. Waayyy back in the early days of my career, I was a young door-to-door sales rep and then sales manager with Culligan Water Conditioning. I took Dale Carnegie sales, […]
Read post »As Yogi Berra would say, “It was Deja vu all over again.” Five years earlier, we’d conducted introductory service/quality improvement workshops for senior management and head office staff of a large company. Culture and feedback surveys gathered input before and during these follow-up workshops. The company clearly had problems with low engagement, faltering customer service, […]
Read post »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 »Leaders wanting to focus their organization on boosting service/quality performance stand at a critical crossroad, choosing which road will take them to that higher ground. Their two main routes are piecemeal programs to “fix the frontline” or a long-term cultural change process. As they look down both roads, first appearances can be deceiving. The piecemeal […]
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 »An old fable tells of a farmer with a wagon brimming full of cabbage heading to a new market. He stops for directions and asks, “How far is it to the market?” The man replies, “It’s about an hour if you go slowly. But if you rush, it will take all day.” It was a […]
Read post »Getting your leadership team away from daily operations for a few days of reflection and planning is incredibly effective. I am clearly biased since I’ve facilitated so many retreats. When offsite retreats are well designed and facilitated (a bit more bias), the return on investment is exponential. Planning a retreat starts with clarifying 3 or […]
Read post »The metaphor of putting rocks, pebbles, and sand in a jar has been used for decades to illustrate the time management principle of prioritization. If we start with sand, then marbles, and finally rocks, we likely won’t get many rocks in the jar. And the jar will have gaps and empty spaces. However, if we […]
Read post »I recently had a call with a CEO about facilitating a strategic planning retreat this fall with 15 of their top leaders. That will be a refreshing change — we’re all fully vaccinated and ready to get together in person again. The CEO sent me their draft agenda for the session. Looking at the fairly […]
Read post »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 […]
Read post »LinkedIn Learning’s 4th Annual 2020 Workplace Learning Report reinforces key trends in boosting leadership and organization effectiveness. This report compiles survey responses from 1,675 Learning and Development professionals, 2,000 learners, and 2,932 managers in North America, Asia-Pacific, and Europe. The survey data looks like it was compiled before the pandemic turned our world upside down, […]
Read post »When we’re mapping a trip to an unfamiliar destination, it’s extremely helpful to be able to zoom out to see the big picture. We can then zoom in for turn by turn details. A big reason up to 70% of change efforts fail is lack of zoomed out planning. Leadership training, succession planning, service/quality improvement, […]
Read post »A department, division, or organization’s culture ripples out from its leadership team. A team that wants to change “them” needs to start with a deep look in the mirror to change “us.” Organizational behavior reflects leadership team behavior. This is much like an old parenting adage, “children are natural mimics; they act like their parents […]
Read post »Learn vital executive team and culture development strategies Drawing from decades of work with hundreds of executive teams, Jim Clemmer delivers an energizing and information-packed webinar on the critical and intertwined need for leadership/culture development and executive team building. This fast-paced 60-minute session will focus on proven frameworks and best practices that empower executive teams […]
Watch webinar »Deloitte’s Human Capital Trends 2016 identified the top ten organizational issues through surveys and interviews with more than 7,000 business and HR leaders from 130 countries. Other than using the dehumanizing phrase “human capital” (treating people as breathing assets with skin, things, or “head count“), this report provides strong research on what’s needed to build […]
Read post »Where’s summer gone already? July and August seem to move at a much higher speed than the rest of the year. I hope you’ve had some downtime to rest and recharge before heading into a busy fall. As I wrote in “Does Your Leadership Team Need Strategic Focus?“, fall is a popular time for leadership […]
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 »(see my review of Firms of Endearment ) “The search for meaning is changing expectations in the marketplace and in the workplace. Indeed, we believe it is changing the very soul of capitalism.” “Consider the words affection, love, joy, authenticity, empathy, compassion, soulfulness, and other terms of endearment. Until recently, such words had no place in […]
Read post »If the reason for a company’s existence is just profit, they won’t be very profitable. But if a company isn’t profitable, it won’t exist long enough to serve any other purpose. That’s what we call the purpose-profit paradox. Firms of Endearment: How World Class Companies Profit from Passion and Purpose draws from an extensive research […]
Read post »Jack Zenger continues to provide deep insights and research on the fast-evolving field of leadership development. This presentation is based on substantial agreement that the objectives for ideal leadership development include acquiring new skills and self-awareness, immediate implementation of these skills, and long-term sustainment of that behavior change. During this Summit keynote address Jack discusses: […]
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