Posts Tagged ‘leadership’

“All Michele does is whine how she can’t get the job done.  She doesn’t have time, or she doesn’t have the budget to get the right staff. She isn’t catching the details, so I have to work late to review everything she does.  Why can’t she just have a good work ethic like me?. This isn’t…

“I don’t know why things don’t get done”   Have you ever heard that before?   In this case, it was the lament from the CEO of a professional services company. He was frustrated that his company was stuck and not getting the strategic initiatives completed. The irony is that his team is really busy…

One of the most difficult aspects of leading, is leading the unknown.  I have been completely unprepared for situations multiple times.  Not only are these events out of my control, there are no reference points in my background to lean into.   When hijackers attacked the United States on 9/11, there was nothing in George…

A man was walking down a street when he saw 3 stone cutters.  Curious, he asked the first one, “What are you doing?”   “I’m doing this to get a paycheck,” was his response.   Coming upon the second, he asked the same question.   “I am creating the most beautiful stones.  Look at how…

If the purpose of business is to create a customer, a really important question to ask is, “Who is the customer?”  It may seem obvious, but it may not be.   It’s complex because sometimes your primary customer doesn’t pay you anything and you must rely on them to help you create paying customers. Wells…

Dear Mark, With your market cap down about $100 Billion, I thought I’d give you some advice. When you were testifying on Capitol Hill, you made a comment that you might want to think about, “ultimately Facebook is a technology platform that allows people to share content…” You were a technology platform, that is what you…

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY High performance leaders are essential to every organization.  For a multitude of practical reasons, stress, depletion or even burn-out can take a toll on their abilities.  While cognitive coaching can help manage the activities, it doesn’t address some of the underlying emotional components at the heart of the matter.  These issues may be…

It was the 10-year anniversary of ABC, Inc  and Tally was frustrated. She was a prisoner in her own company.  ABC was not performing to her expectations and it was draining the life out of her. Whatever fix she tried felt like throwing money into a black hole.  Nothing was working. Many companies are stuck…

I spent 10+ years in B2B sales.  After a while, I could walk into an office and know instantly whether the company was busy or if it was struggling.  That is to say, whether it was dead or alive.  It wasn’t that there was noise, or that there were people lined up, there was an…

Everything was going great, they had achieved success.  Then, all of a sudden, the wheels fell off.  Some key people left, sales growth went flat, and the CEO was scratching his head. Have you ever heard that story before? This was a group of talented, smart people. They thought their success would keep on going,…