Leading in a Digital World
Rapid advances in technological innovation have fundamentally changed the nature of work. New digital platforms are fostering greater speed, agility, and acceleration, forcing humans and machines to work more collaboratively. When companies and their customers go through digital transformation, it requires fundamental changes in how products are sold, serviced, and marketed, and it especially requires…
Personalizing the Organization’s Purpose
People are hungry to work for a higher, compelling purpose that inspires and glues the organization together. By personalizing the organization’s purpose inside the hearts and minds of people, organizations can pursue their economic and social goals. PURPOSE AND VALUES – The north star that guides people’s behavior and holds the organization to its highest…
Leading for Today AND Tomorrow
Our rapidly changing world is forcing organizations to transform themselves sooner than expected. Technological breakthroughs are accelerating the new partnership between human beings and digital machines. Changing org structures and the redistribution of power are forcing us to fundamentally transform the way we work. And workforce demands are dictating entirely new human skills to survive….
How and Why to Make Business Personal
I have a radical proposition to make: all business is personal. Whether you are calling a customer, running a meeting, presenting to your board or having a performance discussion, the impact on yourself and others is a deeply personal one. In fact, everything you do in business affects who you are and your relationships with…
Lead with Toughness and Tenderness
Have you ever found yourself working your butt off and not accomplishing what you want? Revenue growth is slower than you would like. Clients and customers are not closing deals fast enough. New products are slow in the making. Bonuses look slimmer than last year. How do you make sense of all this? Shouldn’t there…
Why We Should Humanize Our Leaders
Many of us tend to see our leaders as heroes or villains. We love them or hate them, idolize or demonize them, in much the same way as the press portrays our presidents. But this conception of leaders as larger than life, as the organization’s Big Brain, undermines leaders and followers alike. It puts tremendous…
Focus on Values, Leadership and Culture for Business Success
Everyone is looking for the secret sauce to success. I have personally spent the past thirty years traveling around the world searching for the recipe. Though I can’t say that I’ve found the leadership equivalent of the Holy Grail, I have noticed that the most successful leaders among us have a very distinct way of…
Three Steps to Developing a Growth Mindset
Everywhere I go these days, business is getting easier AND more complicated. We have access to more information, seemingly unlimited resources and opportunities to succeed. Yet there are more choices, competition comes from everywhere, and it’s tougher to focus and prioritize getting the work done. The world is simply getting more complex. Fortunately, our brains…
When Multitasking Works
We don’t often think about it, but it is such a gift to be able to be a participant and an observer of a conversation at the same time. As humans, we have this wonderful capacity to be witnesses to our own lives. By observing ourselves in action, we can remember where we’ve been, recognize…
Seven Tips for Managing Your Work Relationships
What’s your number one asset as a leader? Your skills? Your education? Your work experience? None of the above. It is your relational capital, your ability to build strong relationships with a wide range of constituents inside and outside your company. Borrowing from an ecommerce taxonomy, your work relationships can be classified into three categories:…
