Over my three-decade career, I have had the opportunity to work with many HR teams. Overall, if I had to grade HR’s effectiveness in bringing in the talent necessary for long term success, I’d give them a mixed review. Even though many HR pros would argue that one of their key roles is recruitment, my […]
Recruiting the right employees is a time-consuming and important process. Hiring the right people is critical to the organization achieving its goals. But what happens when a new hire shows up for work? How can you make sure your star candidate becomes a happy, dedicated employee who never wants to leave? I’ve learned five keys […]
To survive and thrive in today’s unpredictable markets, successful leaders must treat contingency planning as a priority.
The challenge for leadership is to make strategic objectives meaningful at the individual employee level and if employees aren’t paid to further the strategic goals of the organization, they won’t be achieved.
Every organization seeks to gain a strategic advantage over their competitors but many of the more common practices employed have the opposite effect.
Great leaders see the differences in people; they don’t accept that any two people are “equally qualified”.
Most people think of leaders as being charismatic. These are individuals who are constantly in front of the troops. Shouting encouragement and cheering them on. The “out front” leader plays an important role in an organization, but there is another type of leader who lurks behind the scenes that deserves special mention because they are actually […]
I have never espoused that there is a silver bullet for leadership; that there is one single trait or attribute that distinguishes a remarkable leader from others. Rather I have ascribed standout leadership to many little things that are practiced with relentless passion and consistency. That said, I do believe that to be a member […]
It’s one thing to declare that providing top notch service is your strategy to outdo the competition, but it’s quite another to actually do it and do it consistently. These 5 steps will help achieve your goal. Create your service strategy. Effective and remarkable service delivery requires a strategic context that everyone understands at an […]
What makes one leader successful while another “crashes and burns”? If there is a tipping point in a leader’s career, what would it be? In my business life, I have seen individuals develop into remarkable leaders and I have seen their colleagues gradually disappear into mediocrity. The remarkable ones “see” themselves differently. They don’t see themselves […]
I see most leaders at the finishing line of their career or tenure looking back over their journey to think about what they accomplished; what they will be remembered for. Politicians are famous for this. They reflect on the programs, policies and legislation their administration introduced and hope something will resonate with historians and be […]
Many describe a great leader as one who has vision. A leader who is able effortlessly to conceptualize what strategy and direction is required to meet the competitive and economic challenges of the day. A leader who can integrate the various pieces of a complicated business puzzle in their mind and create a strategy of […]
I am amused when all I hear leaders talk about is their successes. The triumphs they achieved paint a blueprint of what it takes to achieve greatness. The algorithm for leadership success is almost exclusively based on what worked for them. True, events that went the right way for someone should be dissected and analyzed. […]
There is certainly no shortage of advice on what actions leaders should take to successfully implement change. However, despite the plethora of guidance available, organizations generally have difficulty executing their “brave idea”. The desired change doesn’t see the light of day; the intended benefits aren’t realized; dysfunction and discontent are often left as the aftermath. […]
As we all know, Christmas is a hectic time of year. The calendar is jammed with work and social events, the pocketbook is stretched and the need to fulfill family dreams is overwhelming. It is a time of year when stress levels reach a tipping point for many. And yet Grandma always pulls it off. […]
Why is employee engagement critical to an organization? Many think “getting more employees involved” is the end game. That’s true, but for what purpose? To make every person feel like they are making a contribution? To make them happier? To make them more supportive of leadership? If the purpose of employee engagement isn’t clearly defined, […]
Much has been written on how organizations can engage their employees more successfully and create a competitive advantage. The advice offered tends to be of a program nature: company-wide initiatives promulgated from above that all functions “down below” are expected to participate in. My thirty-three plus years of leadership experience suggests a different way of […]
Standout leadership doesn’t have to be complicated; it doesn’t have to conform to doctrine advocated by leadership gurus and HR pundits who advocate a more theoretical model. In my experience, leadership that sets you apart from the crowd boils down to how well you practice a few basic human acts, not on how well you […]
One of the biggest issues in any organization is the lack of congruency between what the strategy says and what people do on a day-to-day basis. The strategy says one thing and not only do people do another, they do different things out of sync with the strategy. Massive inconsistency and dysfunction results. This is […]
Standout leadership is not discovered in any textbook. It is born in the trenches where results are achieved, conflict occurs, people engage and pain is experienced. Every day is different. Each day teaches you something new. My schooling as a leader covered more than 12,000 days. They taught me these five key lessons. 1. Imperfection […]
Leaders don’t hire. Yes, you hire to fill a job but you recruit to bring in the right “human essence” to your organization to ensure its long-term success. Discover these competencies in people and gather them around you: Lifelong learner: If you’re not learning, you bring little future value to an organization. Look for evidence […]
Many leaders don’t lead at all, they flit from this to that, from one crisis to another, from one priority to another. They don’t land on anything. They don’t spend too long on any one issue because they want to avoid being pinned down for an opinion or having to make a decision. As long […]
It’s not good enough these days to be a great leader, you have to be a stand-out leader. The challenges facing organizations these days are horrendous. Uncertainty, unpredictability, and randomness all underscore the storm forces that threaten to destroy them. To thrive and survive the maelstrom requires more than greatness from the individuals entrusted to […]
We are besieged with mountains of advice on how to be a “good” leader who practices the craft according to principles espoused by the crowd of academics, consultants and other self proclaimed experts. Whereas guidance from the pundits can be useful it stops short of enabling someone to separate themselves from the herd and become […]
As a leader, you do have a choice as to how you spend your decision-making time; there are numerous possibilities when it comes to which decisions to make yourself and those that you leave for others. How do you determine the “my decision” areas? The criteria I used was payback. Where could I add the […]
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