Drive Operational Accountability

Why Tactical Leadership Is The Most Important Leadership Arena

Why Tactical Leadership Is The Most Important Leadership Arena

Every other arena of leadership is theoretical elegant and practically useless. Cultural leaders inspire. Strategic leaders enable. Operational leaders empower. But it’s the practically accountable tactical leaders who deploy and adjust resources in real time to make…

How Early Wins Help Build A High-Performing Team

How Early Wins Help Build A High-Performing Team

Early wins give teams confidence in themselves. This is why they are generally little wins that can be delivered early, as opposed to big wins that take more time. The general guidance is to over-invest in the early wins to accelerate them and pave the way for other…

How Milestone Management Helps Build A High-Performing Team

How Milestone Management Helps Build A High-Performing Team

Milestone management helps build a high-performing team by providing a systemic engine for learning and adapting. Instead of meeting just to update each other on progress, flip the classroom, putting the updates in a shared file that all can access all the time and…

How Team Charters Drive Impact From Mush

How Team Charters Drive Impact From Mush

The differences between teams that follow through and don’t are clarity of purpose, availability of resources, and agreement on and acceptance of bounded authority and accountability

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Professional reviewing charts and financial reports at a meeting table, writing notes on documents with graphs, data visuals, and sticky notes.
A Good Acquisition Story Is Not a Plan.

When Wolf-Gordon announced it was buying Andor Willow and Look Walls and Interiors, the logic behind the acquisition was easy to read. The private equity owner, Charger Investment Partners, wants…

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Three Leadership Questions to Answer Before Green-lighting a Project

Many tactical projects fail before they start because leaders green-light the wrong things for the wrong reasons. Before you say “yes,” to a project, you and your team should answer…

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Two martial man engaging in a judo combat
Deploying Judo Strategy To Throw A Stronger Business Competitor

In judo, you do not try to overpower a stronger opponent. You accept their strength, side-step their thrust, and use their weight and momentum to throw them. My earlier article,…

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A rugged expedition vehicle drives along a long, empty road toward lush mountains under a dramatic sky.
Deliberately Stupid Executive Onboarding

Every executive walking into a new role is, for a while, stupid. Not incapable. Not unqualified. Stupid in the specific, unavoidable sense that they do not yet know what they…

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A group of executives in a meeting, getting to know each other and working together.
Succeeding Your Own Boss

There's a version of executive onboarding that almost never gets written about, probably because it looks so easy from the outside. Whether it’s the CFO succeeding the CEO, or the…

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Functional Leader Onboarding: Converge Before You Evolve

The fastest way for a new functional or operational leader to fail is to start changing the team before becoming part of it. The better sequence is simpler and harder: converge first,…

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