I received tons of great feedback on last week’s post on How to Get a Promotion. Promoting yourself is an act of declaration and commitment – of declaring who I will be and committing to come from that place. So I’d like to expand on this idea and stress the importance of renewing [...]
What’s the difference between a Big A Agenda and a little a agenda? How do you use both as a leader?
If your leadership team is not working as effectively as you’d like, one place to look is the effectiveness of your meetings. And to have effective meetings, you need to [...]
If you are a leader, “What’s next?” is what people want to know from you. People are looking to you – not necessarily for the specific answer, but to set a direction and agenda.
Whether and how you prepare yourself to lead “what’s next” makes a huge difference in your effectiveness as a leader. You [...]
Have you heard or perhaps said any of these statements recently?
“I have a general idea of what I want, but I’m not exactly sure.” “I’m not sure if my boss/partner/organization/customer would go for that idea.” “I am really frustrated by the lack of clarity in my role/job/relationship/organization.” “I have a really cool idea/dream/possibility – [...]
The Power of the Onion
I frequently hear a complaint from leaders that people within their organizations are resistant to change.
Where does this resistance come from and how do we deal with it as leaders? While a certain amount of resistance is human nature, I submit that quite often leaders create their own resistance!
In the book “Spin [...]
The Power of the Non-Existent Customer Complaint
“We never get any complaints about that.” This notion is one of the most aggravating statements I hear from business leaders. In many cases, customers don’t take the time to complain. Rather than tell you that they didn’t like their experience, they simply leave and do not come back.
Hence the term: the non-existent customer [...]
“Not every team can win, but every team can lose.” Coach Mike Krzyzewski
This quote from Coach K has been one of my favorites ever since I heard him speak a few years ago. Coach K was describing his experience as an assistant coach to the 1992 US Olympic “Dream Team.” This team [...]
When I was in high school, all of the clean laundry in our house would go straight from the dryer to the bed in our downstairs guest room. I say “go straight” as if it would magically fly there, but the reality is that someone carried it there – my mom, my brother, my [...]
The Power of the Well-Orchestrated Existential Crisis
Why are we here? Why do we exist? These are the questions of the existential crisis.
Many people and organizations avoid these questions because they can be scary to confront. We fear spiraling into despair, lack of meaning, or irrelevance. It is much more comfortable to cruise along in the status quo, oblivious [...]
In 1991, when I reported for duty on the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71), one of the first new vocabulary words I learned was FOD.
FOD is a TLA (Three Letter Acronym) used by the U.S. Navy to mean “Foreign Object Damage.”
A tiny screw, a missing bolt, a scrap of metal wire, a [...]

