When you hurt someone’s feelings at work, it’s too easy to try and smooth it over with an attoboy or platitude. But is that really a relationship booster or just a band aid? Most of my keynote talks are about how to create and maintain strong business relationships. Most discussions focus on customer or teammate…
I’m attending my 3rd conference this week as CEO of Net Minds. Sure, I’ve spoken at 200 conferences over the last decade, but that is not the same thing as attending one as a company team member. I’ve taken it for granted that I know conferences, but in fact, getting ready for this week has…
Adam Bryant writes a column in the New York Times called The Corner Office. He has selected 70 of the over 200 interviews he has done with CEO’s for his column and put some core insights from these into a book, The Corner Office: Indispensable and Unexpected Lessons from CEO’s and How to Lead and…
Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it – Charles R. Swindoll A story is told of two men who lived in a small village who got into a terrible dispute that they could not resolve. So they went to the town sage. The first man went to the…
Recently I heard a presentation by Jim Gibbons, President & CEO of Goodwill Industries. In it he said that “every job matters.” Every job has someone relying on the incumbent of the position to do their job well so that the other person can either: benefit or do their own job well. Your client/customer is…
When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber. – Winston Churchill A story is told about a man who went to the doctor to get the results of his test. The doctor sat him down and told him, “I have some very bad news for you. I’m afraid that you are afflicted with…
Last week we revealed a tale of Leadership Lost: A man, who dedicated his life to a cause he believed in, employed thousands and put his grandchildren’s children through college. And yet, if you walked out of college on to his team you might be met with less vision and a whole lot of limitations.…
The CEO prowled the stage like a panther. He had total control of PowerPoint, was animated in sharing his experience and made the thousands in the conference hall feel as if he was speaking directly to them. The team left the keynote feeling inspired to produce great things, confident in their decision of joining the…
When I hear somebody sigh that life is hard, I am always tempted to ask, compared to what? – Sydney Harris What are the top challenges you face as a leader in your business or organization? In a list generated by Sheryl Nance-Nash at dailyfinance.com she provides the Top 10 Challenges for CEO’s in 2011.…
Gary Ridge, CEO of the highly successful company, WD-40 (the lubrication folks) believes that everyone in his firm should get an ‘A’ in goal achievement. Their performance management process reflects this emphasis…
I actually came across this article from Forbes.com in 2009 but never got around to sharing it. The piece tells about Douglas Conant, the new CEO of Campbell Soup Company, who came on board in 2001 and over the next eight years grew EPS by 5-10% every year.
Robert Rosen, CEO of the management consulting firm Healthy Companies International, reported in the July/2010 issue of Leadership Excellence magazine on conclusions gleaned from interviews of top executives in forty countries over the past 20 years. He and his team was looking for the attributes of the best leaders. They singled out five key characteristics:…
I worked recently with the Board of Directors of a large public power company. They needed stronger governance systems. I mentioned how efficient boards operate. I broke down our approach. “With our framework,” I told them, “the board expresses exactly what it wants the organization to achieve in the form of policies. By defining what…