The Secret To Seeing Around Corners
We all know them – those amazing people who appear to be able to see around corners. They almost always seem to know what’s coming before anyone else does and be ready for it. Here’s their dirty little secret. There is no magic. They just spend more time with...
The Stages Of Onboarding Into A New Job
Leadership transitions are some of the toughest challenges people face – professionally and personally. Nearly half of new leaders fail in their first 18 months. Often, those failures are the result of mistakes made in the very beginning that can be devastating for...
How To Win With A Service-Focused Strategy
As described in my earlier article on What It Takes To Accelerate Through A Strategic Inflection Point, if there is a change in your situation or your ambitions, you need to jump-shift your strategy, organization and operations all together, all at the same time....
How To Win With A Delivery-Focused Strategy
As described in my earlier article on What It Takes To Accelerate Through A Strategic Inflection Point, if there is a change in your situation or your ambitions, you need to jump-shift your strategy, organization and operations all together, all at the same time....
Why David Calhoun’s Onboarding As CEO Of Boeing Is A Work In Progress
Assume the replacement of Dennis Muildenburg as Boeing’s CEO has been in the works for a while. Job #1 for the CEO of a production-focused company is to keep the planes from falling down. There was nowhere for Muildenburg to hide when not one but two of Boeing’s 737...
How To Win With A Production-Focused Strategy
As described in my earlier article on What It Takes To Accelerate Through A Strategic Inflection Point, if there is a change in your situation or your ambitions, you need to jump-shift your strategy, organization and operations all together, all at the same time....
Leverage These Bare Minimum Strategic Plan Elements At The Very Least
As we head into the new decade in a couple of weeks, think before you act – at least a little. Certainly, the more complex and sophisticated your organization, the more complex and sophisticated your strategic plan should be. If your business is simple, a simple...
How To Win With A Design-Focused Strategy
As described in my earlier article on What It Takes To Accelerate Through A Strategic Inflection Point, if there is a change in your situation or your ambitions, you need to jump-shift your strategy, organization and operations all together, all at the same time....
Why Sundar Pichai Cannot Both Operate And Innovate At Alphabet And Google
The most effective teams are made up of uniquely strong individuals working interdependently to complement and leverage each other’s strengths. So, interdependence is a good thing. Right? Certainly. But it comes at the cost of having to devote time to helping each other. As the size of the team grows, people spend more and more of their time servicing each other and less and less time focused on their own jobs. Break that cycle by adding a garbage collector to shield the rest of your group from the internal service requests.
Why Every Corporate Group Needs Its Own Garbage Collector
Teams beat individuals every time. And the most effective teams are made up of uniquely strong individuals working interdependently to complement and leverage each other’s strengths. So, interdependence is a good thing. Right? Certainly. But it comes at the cost of...
The Difference Between Executive Onboarding And Performance Failure
While there is certainly an overlap, there are important differences between executive onboarding and performance failures. The vast majority of people that fail in jobs fail for one of three reasons: poor fit, poor delivery, or poor adjustment to a change down the road.
Poor fit is always a failure of selection, due diligence or attitude during onboarding.
Poor delivery is an onboarding failure if it’s caused by getting up to speed too slowing and a performance failure later on.
Poor adjustment is an onboarding failure if it’s rooted in not yet having built a network of trusted advisors to point out the need to adjust or how to adjust. It’s a performance failure if it’s rooted in a fundamental inability to see changes or listen to others.
Are Business Pivots Harder Than Football Pivots? Learn from the Steelers
Have you ever experienced challenges in your business that you resigned yourself to missing your financial plan? Teams in the National Football League encounter the moment where they are playing to make the playoffs or “playing for next year”.
Why Closure Is So Important For Moving On After Losing A Job
We’ve heard it a million times in a million different ways. You can’t embrace the future with one foot stuck in the past. You can’t go forward if you’re looking in the rearview mirror. You can’t solve problems with the same thinking that created the problems in the first place. The common theme is about the need to close out one chapter in order to embrace the next one.
Why Subordinates Should Not Interview Potential Bosses
If a new leader’s first encounter with a future direct report is when they are being interviewed for a job, the balance of power is inverted. The subordinate has more power in the interview. The new boss is going to have more power later.
Why You Should Care About Layoffs At Apple’s Ad Agency TBWA
The Ad Age headline “TBWA/Media Arts Labs Cuts 50 Jobs To Adapt To Client Apple’s Changing Needs,” will not have made it onto most of your radar screens. Some of you pay attention to what’s going on at Apple. But almost none of you pay attention to what’s going on...
How Great Leaders Bring Out Others’ Self-Confidence
Leaders inspire and enable others to do their absolute best together to realize a meaningful and rewarding shared purpose. Great leaders add bringing out others’ self-confidence by emphasizing confidence-building in their approach to the direction, authority, resource, and accountability aspects of delegation.
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