Now to your career. Sometimes when faced with an unmoveable obstacle, you need to change what you are doing. The more hard-headed you are - the bigger the obstacle will become. You need to try something new to either go around the obstacle or not deal with it at all.
Stretch Your New People.
Less People, More Work? Try Gold Standard Leadership.
After decades of time and millions of dollars spent on leadership development and mentoring programs, why are we still facing a leadership crisis at many levels of the business world? By now, most business leaders have learned that our job is to expand and develop our own capacity, while simultaneously preparing the next generation of leaders to take the reins. Develop talent, we've been taught. Be helpful. Be a coach. Mentor someone. But it doesn't happen all that often — at least, not in any significant way.
Leadership Blind Spot: Recognizing Your Team.
We all forget to do it. You focus on work, meetings, reports, etc. and ignore the most powerful leadership tool you have in our arsenal - recognition and acknowledgment. When you neglect it, your teams tend to wander and lose focus. When you regularly insert it into your leadership practices, you'll have the best performing and energized team money can buy.
Resume Writing Tips for CEOs.
Great Leaders Empower Others.
To Be A Great Executive — Be Flexible.
Working Longer, Never Get Anything Done? Rid Yourself of Interruptions.
10 Killer Executive Interview Questions (to ask and answer).
Stay Alive: 10 Career Tips to Win in Bad Times.
I know - things are bad out there and you're worried about your position. Firings are capricious and no one knows where the axe is going to fall next. Based on many of my client sessions and 20+ years of management and coaching, here are 10 productive actions you can put into practice to solidify your position.
Stop Micromanaging.
Global Crisis Forces Corporations To Look Beyond Quarterly Earnings.
With the US economy in turmoil, Wal-Mart, the nation’s leading retailer boasting more than 144 million customers per week, is taking on a new leadership role. In a country where about one person in three is considered obese and 47 million people are without healthcare, the company is taking a unique stand in educating both its consumers and suppliers.
The Secret of 'The New Marketing' by Seth Godin.
This, in two words, is the secret of the new marketing.
Find ten people. Ten people who trust you/respect you/need you/listen to you...
Those ten people need what you have to sell, or want it. And if they love it, you win. If they love it, they'll each find you ten more people (or a hundred or a thousand or, perhaps, just three). Repeat.
If they don't love it, you need a new product. Start over.
Your idea spreads. Your business grows. Not as fast as you want, but faster than you could ever imagine.
This approach changes the posture and timing of everything you do.
You can no longer market to the anonymous masses. They're not anonymous and they're not masses. You can only market to people who are willing participants. Like this group of ten.
The timing means that the idea of a 'launch' and press releases and the big unveiling is nuts. Instead, plan on the gradual build that turns into a tidal wave. Organize for it and spend money appropriately. The fact is, the curve of money spent (big hump, then it tails off) is precisely backwards to what you actually need.
Three years from now, this advice will be so common as to be boring. Today, it's almost certainly the opposite of what you're doing.
Catch Seth at his blog.
No Time? Focus on the Important.
Want to keep your job? Be happy.
Does the recession with its rampant layoffs and cutbacks make your job look better all the time? Believe it or not, donning a pair of "recession goggles" can be good for your career and your mental health. Research shows that an attitude of gratitude in trying times can not only help you keep your job, but get you the job you want.
Things I learned from Warren Buffett.
I just went back to my notes from a video of Warren Buffett speaking his mind. Here are a few of his tips on investing, business, and life.
There are no called strikes in the ballgame of investing. You do not lose a single penny by passing on any given investment. Even if someone else hits a homerun with it, doesn’t mean that you are missing out. That said, you will have to swing the bat if you ever want to get anywhere. Just make sure it is a good pitch.
Do business with people you like and who share your objectives. Money should not be only consideration when making business decisions. We have all worked with some people who we would have paid any amount NOT to work with. If we could quantify joy and happiness, it would be easy to see that working with people you like would far outweigh the joy received by getting more money with bad business partners.
Invest in companies selling products that consumers are not concerned with price.
It’s not about the biggest motor, but the most efficient motor. A smaller company that is run efficiently is going to do better for their shareholders than a mammoth company with wasteful spending.
Don’t worry about what the stock market will do, focus on what the company will do. Good companies can and will go up even in the middle of falling market.
With stocks it is hard to know WHEN something will happen, but it is easy to know WHAT will happen. Everyone seems to be concerned with the WHEN, but focusing on the WHAT seems to yield a nice fruit.
Find companies with endless demand for their products. Funeral homes will always be needed, because people are still dying.
Leave your children enough money so they can do anything, but not enough that they don’t have to do anything.
Decision making abilities fade as cash flow increases. If you only have $5 in your pocket until the end of the week, it is likely that you will make a good decision with it, because it is all you have. On the other hand, if you have $100 for the week, your decisions regarding a $5 purchase are far less critical since you have another $95. Therefore, people tend not to treat those decisions with the same respect they would if it was their last $5.
How To Manage The Unmanageable.
Due to many interpersonal, generational, or behavioral elements — you will always bump into the troubled employee. How do you manage them?
Many times during my 20+ years of corporate management, I ran into certain team members who just didn't play by my rules. This is not a rare situation in business and there are three clear outcomes:
You ultimately fire them. (bad)
You understand how they 'operate' and then you integrate their style into your processes. (better)
You teach them how to work within your management structure. (best)
Of course the first is the last resort, but I've had to do this on a number of occasions — usually do to the associate's disinterest of their position. In the end, it's better for the both of us.
The second outcome, being flexible, is a better outcome, but causes you to modify your management, their communication, work habits, delivery for each of your team members. That's okay when you have 1-2 direct reports, but it becomes unmanageable when you have 5-7. Now some will disagree with me (and I encourage your comments!) - and you might manage your team this way presently - but the personalized nature of this management style will cause you to spend more hours than necessary trying to understand, manage, and navigate each personality.
So, the third — have them work within your management style is the best. Why? They ascribe to your schedule, your input/output of communication, and they align with your measures of interaction with their teams. Another side benefit is that they learn another management method that might be better than their own, developing a flexible work style that will benefit them for their entire career.
One way I got my team to report to me is to use this basic template each time we had a status meeting:
What did I accomplish?
What is planned for next week?
Long Term Projects (with deadline dates)
Concerns & Issues (with solutions)
If each team member filled this out, I could immediately see what they got accomplished, what they will be working on, what is on the horizon, and what obstacles they are running into. The only two rules — they have to keep it to one page and the bulleted items underneath each area must be short phrases - not run-on sentences. This allowed me to review quickly and make comments. Our meetings were quick, focused and powerful.
In addition, they then review their week and slowly become more delivery focused. No more run-on projects without an end date. At the end of the year, it also makes their review soooo easy - they just review a summary of their sheets.
There are three types of people in this world.
Those who make things happen.Those who watch things happen. Those who wonder what happened.
Which one will you be today?
We use the Robert Langdon/Sophie Neveu characters from Dan Brown's The DaVinci Code as examples with many of our clients. What are they like?
Smart - top of their professions.
Heroic - will do what has to be done.
Action-oriented - when confronted with a problem/obstacle, they take action.
Focused - thinks deeply about the topic at hand.
Clever - thinks outside of the box.
Communicative - takes charge, but not in an offensive way.
We can go on and on. Bottom line, these two characters present personas that one can use to take action, rather than retreat and let someone else take a chance. It might sound funny or ridiculous - but next time you find yourself in an uncomfortable situation, one where you are forced to step out of your comfort zone - pick a character - and focus on their strengths, make them yours, and you will initiate action immediately.
Short Term Thinking.
What ever happened to Five Year Plans? Long Term Planning?
It's probably the reason why our economy is in the state it is currently in.
It's most likely why many companies fail to grow and just keep things the same.
It's the reason why your team is always questioning your decisions.
It's the reason why there is massive churn at the top of many companies.
What ever happened to Five Year Plans? They became dirty words over the past 10 years. Anyone who ascribed to a 3-5 year plan was not a forward thinker, someone who was not 'up with the times', or a 'Web 2.0' executive (by the way, Web 2.0 as a descriptive term has been dead for a long time).
What the business glitterati forgot is that long term planning is focused on a GOAL - and the route to that goal might change - and even the goal might change. Unfortunately, the latest fad 'state' of executive management is to come on board and throw out everything that was done before and start anew. Then your successor comes on board (after you have received a very handsome golden parachute) and throws out your plan and begins anew. And so it goes.
I charge that this cleansing of capitalism must wash away the flippant ways of past executives. We need the captains of industry to lead with bold visions and stay the course - and never waver. I hope I am right.
What long term plans do you have?