Last week a reader asked for advice on the best way to craft a vision and mission statement for their organization. Beware! This could be a big trap. I often poll my speaking or workshop audiences and ask for a show of hands on how many participants’ organizations have a vision, values, or mission statement. […]
Read post »Spring is arriving in the Northern Hemisphere with renewal, rebirth, and new growth. Thankfully, we’re also seeing strong signs of economic growth after the most severe “economic winter” in many decades. Forward thinking organizations are now looking toward renewing or rebuilding leadership skills. That generally starts with learning and development initiatives for supervisors, managers, and […]
Read post »A big challenge for many organizations today is providing learning and development opportunities when many managers, supervisors, and staff are extremely pressed for time. It gets even more challenging when many people are spread out among a number of locations. Gerry Parker, Lead HR Advisor for Rural Areas at Vancouver Coastal Health, has a major […]
Read post »A member of a group I belong to on LinkedIn sent me this request: “I have a presentation to an executive team for a company that provides medical garments to outpatient facilities throughout the US. I will be helping the Organization Development manager make a business case for leadership and culture development. I’m going to […]
Read post »Many managers, HR/Training/Safety and other support professionals, as well as team leaders are struggling with how to help people deal with constant change. More and more people are complaining of “change fatigue” as organizations deal with: • Continuous changes in leadership, direction, processes, and organization structure; • Relentless pressure to do more with less in […]
Read post »Today is Heather and my wedding anniversary. We’ve been happily married for about 15 years now. Since we were married in 1977, 15 out of 32 years isn’t bad! Actually, that’s an old joke we both use when we’re asked how long we have been married. We’ve been quite happily married for most of those […]
Read post »Whether it’s across an entire organization or with a local team, culture change is a hot issue these days. For good reason; culture trumps strategy, structure, processes, or technology. We have long defined culture as “the way we do things around here.” A team or organizational culture heavily influences what’s acceptable and unacceptable behavior. And […]
Read post »Unpredictable, unexpected, rapid, and even unfair change is rocking governments, businesses, and people worldwide. And the history buff in me finds lots of evidence to show this really isn’t a new trend – and will never stop. There’s no “getting through this crazy period” to some mythical place of stability, or predictable sameness. Whether these […]
Read post »The June issue of my monthly e-newsletter, The Leader Letter, went out last week. In it I included an item from my April 30 blog posting responding to a workshop attendee who read one of my articles with a chart on moving from casual or moderate to intense levels of customer service. She also asked […]
Read post »Last week we sent out the Improvement Point below to subscribers. “Despite all the talk – passionate speeches, glossy brochures, clever ads, high tech videos, convincing sales pitches, snappy slogans, strategic plans, and solemn annual reports – the service and quality action delivered by most organizations is mediocre at best.” – from Jim Clemmer’s article, […]
Read post »On May 19 I was interviewed for a one hour teleconference by Shelley MacDougall and Kevin MacDonald. Shelley and Kevin have created a program (mainly for the private club industry) called the Extraordinary Leader. It is a tele-class and web-based community with the focus of developing Extraordinary Leaders. This year-long program is divided into twelve […]
Read post »A workshop attendee recently visited our web site article library and read “Casual, Moderate, and Intense Levels of Customer/Partner Focus.”. She sent me an e-mail asking for further insights to the intense level of service I highlighted in that chart. She also wanted ideas on how to accomplish this on a smaller scale within a […]
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 »In one of last week’s blog postings I featured a reflective comment from Gregory Knight, Department Head, Laboratory Services, U.S. Navy, that he posted at the bottom of my article “True to Our Souls.”Click here to read it..” That prompted Linda Morelli, Michael Darmody, and Ravi Tangri to add their insightful thoughts and feedback to […]
Read post »It’s been happening so regularly I shouldn’t be so surprised when it happens yet again. I am talking about the “coincidence” of encounters or correspondence while I am working on something along those very lines. Last week I was finishing the manuscript to my latest book. It’s an extension and significant build upon the approaches […]
Read post »Like the weather, many people talk about innovation but few managers do much about it. Unlike the weather, there is a lot managers can and must do about innovation – especially in difficult times. Innovation often falls into the same trap as strategic planning, economic forecasting, and change management. There is no orderly path that […]
Read post »The CLEMMER Group has been working with the Canadian division of an internationally owned services business. The company has been in Canada for just ten years and growing very rapidly. Early in our consulting to this company, we started working with them to define and more effectively shape their organizational culture, after one of the […]
Read post »I received an e-mail from a reader who was recently promoted into a process improvement coordinator role working with their management team. He asked me for the right path to begin. The root of this kind of question is what has caused so much of the fad surfing and rigid off-the-shelf programs that have messed […]
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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