It’s bacckkkkk. Despite numerous studies showing return-to-office mandates don’t work — and often backfire — the federal government is the latest of way too many organizational bosses to spew management double talk. The Ottawa Citizen reports that Deputy Clerk of the Privy Council Christiane Fox argues “in-person work is necessary for team building.” She […]
Read post »As I reset and rebalance with summer R & R (relaxation and rejuvenation), I am giving you some blog R & R (reusing and recycling). Many of this summer’s blogs are past favorites. May you use them for your own R & R (review and refocus). Hope these R helpful! P.S. – What’s a pirate’s […]
Read post »Authoritarian leadership seems to be resurging. The Oxford Review Encyclopedia of Terms gives this definition; “Authoritarian leadership refers to any situation where a leader keeps hold of as much power and authority as possible. Also known as coercive or dictatorial leadership, authoritarian leaders, tend to keep all the decision-making authority to themselves and make […]
Read post »In Working with Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman reports on a study by the Center for Creative Leadership of top American and European leaders whose careers derailed, “the inability to build and lead a team was one of the most common reasons for failure.” He goes on to quote a highly successful Silicon Valley venture capitalist, […]
Read post »The Hays Canada 2024 Salary & Hiring Trends report warns, “Quiet quitting was the dominant theme in 2023, defined as ‘putting in no more time, effort, or enthusiasm than necessary.’ This trend is evident in labor productivity, which has declined nationally in six consecutive quarters. But this quiet quitting trend could be about to turn […]
Read post »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 »Accountability is a mess in many organizations. Often good performers are put into bad processes within systems that subvert rather than support them. “The 85/15 Rule” emerged from decades of root cause analysis of service/quality breakdowns. This showed that roughly 85% of the time the failure is caused by the system, processes, structure, or practices […]
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 »One of the root causes of our accountability mess is looking for who, not what went wrong. This leads to a search for the guilty as the cause of breakdowns in customer service, quality, communication, teamwork, and the like. It becomes a hunt to fix the blame more than fixing the problem. But those […]
Read post »As I wrote about the accountability mess, a good person in a bad system or process sets that them up for failure — and blame. “The 85/15 Rule” emerged from decades of root cause analysis of service/quality breakdowns. About 85% of the time the fault is caused by the system, processes, structure, or practices of […]
Read post »Accountability is highly subjective. Its meaning depends on whether we’re at the giving or receiving end. Many of us have been lashed with the accountability whip wielded by a blundering manager playing “gotcha games.” Often, accountability is a search for who to punish. The Blame Game and finger-pointing turns problem-solving and performance issues into […]
Read post »I was interviewing a leadership team member to prepare for an offsite planning retreat. I asked about the biggest challenges facing their team. She wearily said it was their unfocused frantic pace of activity. “We have lots of projects, goals, and priorities. We’re constantly making lists and setting action plans. But we seldom see […]
Read post »Part Three of a Series on The Tempting Ten Wallow Words (Click to read Parts One and Two) Does this sound familiar… “Nowadays, people don’t ask you how you are, they say, ‘Are you busy?’ meaning, ‘Are you well?’ If someone actually does ask you how you are, the most cheerful answer, of […]
Read post »A growing number of articles and studies feature debates, research, and advice on returning to the office, working from home, and many hybrids. City cores across North American report office occupancy rates far below pre-pandemic levels. Studies such as those featured in Time magazine show empty office tower escalators with the headline Return-to-Office Full […]
Read post »In a small pub in the highlands of Scotland, a group of fishermen gathered one afternoon to swap tales over a round of ale. One of them stretched his arms apart to show the big one that got away. At that very point, a server walked past carrying a tray of full ale glasses. The […]
Read post »Like the weather, many leaders talk about agility and innovation, but few managers do much about it. Unlike the weather, there’s a great deal managers can do about building agile and innovative cultures. Innovation and organization learning often falls into the same trap as strategic planning, economic forecasting, and change management. There is no orderly […]
Read post »Are your own people your biggest barrier to higher innovation and agility? That’s what research from Great Place to Work found in a study of 792 companies totaling about 500,000 employees. In their study, Innovation by All, Great Place to Work concluded organizations with high-trust cultures involve and engage many more employees than most organizations […]
Read post »In his article on “Crafting Strategy,” McGill University professor and management author, Henry Mintzberg, provides a good example of innovation and organizational learning in high-performing, agile organizations: “Out in the field, a salesman visits a customer. The product isn’t quite right, and together they work out some modifications. The salesman returns to his company […]
Read post »Once upon a time, a manager had a frog named Fred working on his team. After returning from a strategic planning retreat, he passionately exclaimed to Fred, “We’re going to open an air courier division! I’m going to teach you to fly!” Fred responded, “I can’t fly. I am a frog, not a bird.” Disappointed […]
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