If you’ve been an executive long enough, you’ve probably noticed trends in employee productivity and happiness. At the height of summer, in the middle of the holiday season, and maybe on cold, rainy days – there are definite slumps in motivation around any office. However, if you’re seeing a marked decrease in productivity and employee Read More >
Past Executive Briefings
Managing Emerging Risks to Prevent Future Fires
As an executive, you’re probably an expert firefighter by now. Every day, it feels like a new fire crops up that demands your attention and prevents higher-level work from getting done. Over time, though, executives and leaders may begin to notice signs of “potential fires” – or emerging risks – as they crop up. Knowing Read More >
Finding Time to Improve Soft Skills in Employees
As leaders and executives, it’s our job to find the strengths in our peers and employees. But as you know, no one can be great at everything. While an employee or teammate may excel in one area (often called their “hard skill”), they may be sorely lacking in other skills (called “soft skills”). Soft skills Read More >
5 Obstacles to Great Leadership & How to Address Them
What is your Achilles heel – your weak point – as a leader? Is it delegation? A short temper? Maybe it’s statistics and analytical analysis. Whatever your weaknesses are, you are probably much acquainted with them by this point in your career. You’ve probably found work-arounds that help you function on a daily basis that Read More >
Being Politically Adept Is Not BS
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard aspiring executives ask, “Do I have to BS or kiss ‘you know what’ to succeed?” I’ve even heard CEOs ask if they really have to pretend to like board members. But there is a big difference between being emotionally intelligent and politically aware within an organization Read More >
Make Your Boss Your Client
Successful executives and leaders obviously know how to manage others. But managing one’s boss, superior executives, board members or investors is another matter entirely. Unfortunately, this component of your executive career is just as important – if not more so – than being able to manage employees. Take, for example, the story of Frank: Frank Read More >
Keys to Great Execution
“The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” – Robert Burns – Working with senior executives across industries, whether they work for small business or Fortune 500 companies, I’ve realized there is one main thing that separates top performers: execution. The most common theme I’ve heard from top performing executives is that they Read More >
The Middle Market Executive’s Challenges
When I wrote about Peter Drucker in a previous issue, I realized something that will seem very obvious to many of you: Most of the big names (Peter Drucker, Jim Collins, John Kotter, etc.) write about leadership life in Fortune 1000 size companies. How many of you work for companies that large? Most of my Read More >
How to Lead Top Performers in a Global Econonmy
In our modern global economy, most businesses rely on well-educated people — or “knowledge workers,” as the late Peter Drucker called them — to develop their products or deliver their services. In these organizations, many executives are finding that traditional forms of leadership don’t work. “Heroic leadership,” as it is called, is the conventional idea Read More >
Executive Blindspots: How to Avoid Them
Do you know anyone who can bat 1.000? The best baseball players hit in the low to mid .300 range and we think that is terrific. Executives don’t bat 1.000 when it comes to decision making — nobody is perfect. However, executives’ “batting average” may be lower if they’re making decisions without addressing potential blind spots. What are Read More >