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Picture of Deidre Paknad

Deidre Paknad

Deidre Paknad is currently the CEO of Workboard, Inc.  She has decades of experience leading large enterprise and emerging startup teams on strategic pursuits and is passionate about helping other leaders engage their teams in great achievement. As CEO of Workboard, Deidre works closely with clients on goal development and raising execution velocity. As a serial entrepreneur, she founded and led several companies. Her last company was acquired by IBM, where she led a high-growth global business for several years and worked with CIOs on transformation initiatives. She writes regularly on strategy, leadership, goal alignment, execution excellence and mentoring. Deidre has been recognized by the Smithsonian Institution for innovation twice and has 17 patents. Workboard is the app leaders use to align goals, execution, and feedback in real time.  Workboard is free for teams. Follow Deidre on Twitter @day_dree or @WorkboardInc
Picture of Deidre Paknad

Deidre Paknad

Deidre Paknad is currently the CEO of Workboard, Inc.  She has decades of experience leading large enterprise and emerging startup teams on strategic pursuits and is passionate about helping other leaders engage their teams in great achievement. As CEO of Workboard, Deidre works closely with clients on goal development and raising execution velocity. As a serial entrepreneur, she founded and led several companies. Her last company was acquired by IBM, where she led a high-growth global business for several years and worked with CIOs on transformation initiatives. She writes regularly on strategy, leadership, goal alignment, execution excellence and mentoring. Deidre has been recognized by the Smithsonian Institution for innovation twice and has 17 patents. Workboard is the app leaders use to align goals, execution, and feedback in real time.  Workboard is free for teams. Follow Deidre on Twitter @day_dree or @WorkboardInc

4 Essential Qualities Of Leadership

Leadership is a personal quality and behavior, not a role or title. And it’s an increasingly important capability as enterprise diversity and distances between people increase. Distance and diversity are compounded by a massive gap between people, their work, goals and feedback. While it’s always been important for senior managers and executives to lead, it’s never been more important for front-line managers to do so. Why is leadership at every level so important? Just 7% of people understand the goals of their organization and what they need to do to achieve them. Ironically, 76% of people say they use daily to-do lists. As

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Commit To Building New Leadership Habits

What is it you want to accomplish in 2015? What steps and actions will you take to achieve your goals? Chances are your first thought was about improving your direct work product, productivity or domain skills rather than improving your competencies as a manager. However, if your goals include a career and performance leap, improving your leadership skills may be the decisive factor in your success. Most managers and executives work hard, but hard work isn’t the same as leading the way. Harvard Business Review, McKinsey and Gallup cite how managers spend their time as the root cause of many terrible

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Getting Things Done Vs. Making An Impact

There is a lot of discussion about productivity, but I’ve always preferred the term velocity. I’ve found that my velocity to goal determines my career velocity. By that I mean the speed and efficiency with which I achieve my goals determines the speed and degree of career growth I experience. If I use half the time and half the people, capital and other resources to achieve the goal as planned or as a peer, there will be career reward and recognition. As importantly, the organization can then apply the unused time, capital, people and other resources to achieving more than it

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Build on Strengths, Avoid Weaknesses

At your next set of performance reviews, what are you going to talk about with your employees? You may discuss what goals were met, next year’s objectives, or where their performance needs improvement. But new research suggests that more than fixing flaws, managers should be concerned with building on strengths.  In a recent Forbes article, Joseph Folkman shares research that reveals that “70-80% of leaders and employees benefit more from improving what they are doing right.” If someone on your team is a great writer but lousy at spreadsheets, the tendency is to try to help the employee improve his or her

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6 Hallmarks Of High Performing Teams

There is nothing quite like the sensation and satisfaction of being on a high performing team. I’ve had this luck and pleasure a number of times in my career, but it’s rarer than I’d like. High performing teams seem to generate their own energy and elevate everyone on the team to their full potential. Despite achieving more, working on these teams is less taxing — the workday feels shorter and less frustrating. So what sets high performing teams apart and why aren’t all teams so successful and fun? High performing teams aren’t just a collection of strong individual performers, although that

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Hey Kid, Want An Opportunity To Excel?

In my first job out of college, a senior VP – a man I admired – would occasionally come by my desk at the end of the day and say, “Hey kid, you want an opportunity to excel?” In fact, there wasn’t anything I wanted more than that! These opportunities were special projects outside of my normal responsibilities; I always jumped at the chance to learn, build skills and get guidance from him. He was great at explaining why the projects were important, what he needed and coaching me to great results. That experience left an indelible mark on me and

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