Attributes of Successful Strategy Champions

Strategies are often launched or refined at the start of a new year. And while you may have conceived the strategy, its successful implementation often depends on those in your team who appreciate why the strategy is necessary, believe in it and your Company, and have the critical thinking and interpersonal competencies to drive it forward. During strategy implementation, there will be challenging moments that provoke cynicism and compromise morale. At such times, asserting authority …

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The New Year’s Liminal Moment

The new year is off and running. Your schedule is filling, and the work is ramping up. It’s a unique liminal moment when you’re entering the portal of the new year, and can still look back at the last one. Before challenges and changing priorities capture much of your time, there’s an opportunity to assess your progress from ‘what is’ to ‘what can be,’ to evaluate what worked well and what must improve. Last year, …

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Generosity and Appreciation

While the holiday season can be busy and demanding, take time to reflect and to consider the joyfulness of being with others. The holidays are a time of generosity and appreciation, kindled by our experiences with family, friends, and community. Generosity comes in many forms, and all of them are gifts, generating gratitude in the recipient and the giver. Author Seth Godin says it well: “Generosity and gratitude often go together. They light a path …

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Shaping An Innovation Culture

Shaping your culture to nurture innovation begins by encouraging your people to challenge the status quo, asking what is possible. And doing so in a manner that preserves respect for the certainty, efficiency, and reduced risk that precedent has delivered. Since developing a novel technology or product is typically too lofty a goal and too risky a proposition for most businesses, it’s a more realistic expectation to motivate the exploration of what can be done …

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Questioning Performance

The approaching year-end is a milestone that often triggers an assessment of performance, yours and those who produce yours. What’s your default approach for reviewing performance with your team? Does your discussion focus on goal status, and how you assess what a direct report did, or could do, to impact it? Or, do you probe how that person evaluates their performance, why it occurred, and what they need from you going forward? If this was …

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Your Team’s Two Types of Labor

We know that the most effective teams collaborate, take ownership, and improve results. We know that the leaders who build these teams have the experience and emotional intelligence to understand how their mindsets and actions affect those they lead, enabling the development of trust that strengthens relationships and cultivates their teams’ shared accountability. And, we know that these leaders, who rightly acknowledge their responsibility to develop the talents of those they lead, continuously engage with …

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The Prime Directive for Service

Customer relationships are valuable, fragile, and the foundation of your business. Your customer-service personnel are your front-line representatives, the face of your business. When something does not go as planned, how they respond to your customer-in-need makes all the difference in how that customer appraises the value of your relationship. How are your service people trained to respond? Do they deliver a scripted reply, based on what they can see on their computer screen, and …

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Preserving Trust

How do you react when someone unexpectedly cuts you off when you’re driving? Do you pause and think about why this happened? Perhaps the driver didn’t see you or had some emergency. Or, do you react emotionally, instantly uttering some obscenity? For most of us, option B prevails, because our brain’s first reaction to any stimuli is always an emotional one; and, we’ve evolved to react more strongly to negative inputs than to positive ones. …

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Leading with Energy

Each person in your business is a source of energy, with a unique set of gifts, experience, and insight. And unlike other forms of energy, the energy your people invest in their work is infinitely renewable and expandable. Individuals have consistently demonstrated their capacity to contribute energy, and then quickly recharge. When properly nurtured, a person’s capacity to contribute energy can expand, drawing on a nearly inexhaustible reserve of potential energy and creativity. Leaders can …

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The Customer Service Dilemma

If customer service impacts the value you create for your customers, then you’re confronted with the service investment dilemma. On one hand, if your judgement is that customer service is a necessity that creates little additional value, then you might structure your customer service operation as a cost center. Making cost control the highest priority often ensures that your customers speak with some of your lowest paid employees, who are not empowered to provide solutions or make …

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