By Carl Robinson, Ph.D. copyright 2007 Fortune 500 companies pay consulting firms like McKinsey $750,000. – $1,000,000 to help them develop a strategic plan. They get paid whether or not the company actually executes the plan – successfully or not. Jim Collins, in Good to Great noted, “Strategy per se did not separate the good-to-great Read More >

Carl Robinson, Ph.D., copyright 2008 One of the most important ingredients for success in any business is to hire smart, confident and assertive people. However, when you do, you’re sure to have conflict. It’s impossible to put a bunch of smart, assertive people together without them bumping heads. In fact, if there isn’t conflict, then Read More >

By Carl Robinson, Ph.D., copyright 2009 The economy is tough, but getting better.  I hear it from most of my C-Level clients.  The tone is now, “We need to gear up so that we are not left behind as we emerge from the recession.”  If you’ve been fortunate, you’ve built a good, perhaps “great” company Read More >

How To Deal With The Unintentional Jerk Executive By Carl Robinson, Ph.D. © 2010 Difficult executives are the bane of their peers and a major drag on the energy of their bosses. There is a particular type that I will call the “unintentional jerk” who has the best of intentions and firmly believes that they Read More >

Flex Your Team’s Muscle When was the last time you took the temperature of your team or department’s effectiveness? They have likely pulled together at times, and apart at others.  Take stock on how things are going, and you’ll be able to keep moving in a positive direction, or use what you learn here to get back on track. Do the Read More >

Effective delegation is the best indicator of effective management simply because it is so basic to both personal and organizational growth.  –Stephen R. Covey   Are you a Producer? If you are a producer who can delegate effectively, then your accomplishments far exceed your efforts, because those you foster will also be producers for you, exponentially Read More >

You are a successful manager. You have invested in your team, and it has paid off in a positive working relationship. So where does it go from here? Can you maintain the praise and rewards that have gotten you to this point? Praise and rewards work well for a limited time, but at some point the Read More >

One of the most important things on which any organization can focus its concerted efforts is in the creation of a vision. This forward-looking statement provides a clear picture of where the organization wants to be in the future and what it will look like when it gets there. But a vision is more than Read More >

Don’t let yourself be confused by the difference between urgency and emergency. Emergency is an after-the-fact response to an action or consequence, while urgency is a proactive state of performance CEOs often find themselves needing to create. Competitive pressure is one reason urgency is needed. If a manager is unable to keep forward movement at Read More >

Learning From Your Mistakes The American author, Meg Cabot, is credited with saying “Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.” As a manager, and especially as someone in a company’s highest of positions, there is often a fear of failure…a fear that allowing anyone Read More >