A new CEO asked me which important leadership skills he needed to succeed—the building blocks of success. I suspect he thought my answer would include things like industry knowledge, technical brilliance, negotiating prowess and capital structure analysis. Those are all interesting, but they aren’t success factors I’ve observed in my many years of coaching successful […]
“Gentlemen, this is a football.” —Vince Lombardi Although I can’t imagine his accomplished players — back in 1961 — were excited to hear this, I appreciate that when you’re seeking improvement, you start with the basics. It’s difficult to get onto a professional football team while lacking basic skills. But I’ve seen numerous senior managers, […]
Let’s talk about leadership rather than politics. There are very serious lessons for senior leaders to learn from our 45th president, particularly CEOs. From the perspective of many people, and yours may be different, Donald Trump seems more than willing to sacrifice democracy to assuage his ego. Of course, you say, I’d never do that. […]
Stability in business is good, but only if you’re meeting your objectives. Phrases like “operating like a well-oiled machine,” “keep the train on the tracks” and “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” all pay homage to stability. In some regards, the CEO’s job is to create stability. Shareholders look for stable (and rising) growth […]
Andrew got me pumped up today! He found me on the web and wanted advice about planning for business growth. He’s just getting started, growing rapidly, and I’m not the right resource, but I pointed him toward a couple of solutions to help. Our 30-minute phone call was probably more helpful for me, however, than […]
Running a business is hard. Running a business with a triple headed monster on your heels (Covid, an emotionally supercharged political environment and racial tension) is beyond hard; its nutty! If you are CEO, you know what I mean. If you are not, try to put yourself in their shoes for a moment. Here we […]
I’ve had a few recent inquiries from bright, talented people who want coaching. They’re all in significant roles that can bring tremendous value to the company. Unfortunately, they work for Luddites who won’t pay for coaching. In fact, their efforts to ask for mentoring from their boss resulted in a cold shoulder and comments such […]
A fellow executive coach and I had a good call recently when he suggested that most everyone is on their heels right now, both in business and personally, and the future is foggy. As I’ve been a longtime proponent of slowing the game down and asking the right questions, I thought I’d share a few […]
Has your culture changed because of coronavirus? Has the insidious disease crept into your organization like a stealthy criminal? Not overtly, but like a termite eating at your foundation. It’s not the disease, of course, that might be gnawing on your culture, but rather the changes it caused. Asynchronous communication, delayed feedback, stilted social bonding, […]
We have many pine trees in our yard and love them. Except, of course, for what they do to our gutters. The picture is actually from the front of my house. After a quick trip to the Homeadvisor website and a bit of research on Google, I decided that I needed gutter guards. 10 minutes […]