Is This Meeting Necessary?

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Time is the only irreplaceable asset, so deciding how much of your valuable time to invest in meetings is vital.  Meetings seem to consume more and more time.What makes a meeting productive? What makes it necessary for you to attend? The stated purpose for a meeting can be to inform, or to educate, or to motivate. But what makes any meeting productive is the dialogue it generates, the dialogue required to motivate action and make progress. One-sided pronouncements don’t …

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3 Ways to Lead Better in the Virtual World

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The exclusive use of virtual business methods, fostered by our shared Covid experience, has challenged many leadership paradigms. Particularly hard hit are those processes that rely on interpersonal skills to develop trust and to cultivate the collaboration necessary for teams to drive change, take ownership and improve results.  Leaders who have traditionally used their relational skills to strengthen their personal connections with those they lead, to encourage open, transparent communication, and to better understand what emotions are motivating the …

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Let Learning Be Doing

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How we educate has always been a topic for debate, but in these days of Covid adaptation, all proposed methodologies, and their related consequences, are being critically scrutinized.  In public education, policies and circumstances have driven the current dialogue about alternatives to a fever pitch. While in business organizations, where each investment’s value is projected and monitored, the discussion about the most effective education methods has continued unabated.  One reason this debate persists is that we’ve labelled …

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The Process in Innovation

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When considering an innovation initiative, leaders tend to start by evaluating their accumulated product or service data. They know the profit margin for each offering, and how well each is selling in key markets; often, they have a good sense of market share for each offering. They may even have customer satisfaction metrics available for each product or service.  But all of this internally-generated data does little to clarify why customers choose a specific product or service, what …

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Making a Difference

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For months now, people have been working virtually to keep the wheels turning…fulfilling their responsibilities, meeting their deadlines and striving to achieve their assigned goals. It’s necessary work, producing some personal satisfaction, but often leaving many with a thirst to do more…To contribute to a purpose they believe in…To invest their energy in more meaningful work…To make a difference.  As their leader, it’s expected that you’ll nurture this aspiration to make a difference, to drive productive change that improves …

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Will Capitalism Survive?

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Today’s headlines may make us wonder if free market capitalism can survive its current challenges?  After being the source for exceptional global progress, freedom, innovation and an improving standard of living for over 300 years, is capitalism still the best engine for creation and creativity, or as some proclaim, has it shifted to become an engine of destruction? To date, no other competing model to capitalism has ever delivered the amount of global progress experienced during the …

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Cultivating Shared Accountability

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High performing teams embrace shared accountability. Having committed that the ownership of their decisions is shared by the team rather than by their leader alone, they rely on one another to achieve results. The leaders of these teams cultivate this environment of shared responsibility by: Ensuring that all team members operate under common standards of performance, fostering appreciation and satisfaction; Encouraging team members to challenge the status quo, to experiment, and to leverage their initiative and experience, driving …

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Acting With Urgency

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Today’s business environment changes rapidly. Functioning successfully in it compels businesses to quickly make accurate decisions.  Each of these decisions is made within a specific context, and with a defined set of criteria, against which various options are evaluated. The context is the company’s culture as described in 3 foundational documents: Its Purpose – Why the business exists and how it makes a difference for customers; Its Values – The company’s core beliefs which define how it behaves and why; …

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Price or Value

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Offering your product or service as the lowest priced alternative is a simple, efficient strategy. Price is obvious to all buyers. It’s clear, direct and easy to evaluate. It’s often the same for everyone. Offering the lowest price is seductive. But doing so makes your offering a commodity – discounting your expertise, diminishing your brand, and setting you up for a one-way journey down in revenue and profit. A purchase becomes just another transaction, producing no enduring value for the …

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Krulak’s Law

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Charles Krulak is a highly decorated, deeply experienced, retired General in the United States Marine Corps. In 1999, the General published an insightful article about leadership that later led him to become a college President and founder of theKrulak Institute for Leadership, Experiential Learning, and Civic Engagement.  The core leadership principle that he cited in 1999, which is often described as Krulak’s Law of Leadership, is “that the future of an organization is in the hands of …

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