make a difference

Investing Your Irreplaceable Time

by

With the holidays behind us, the routine of our life returns, bringing its heightened awareness of time. The digits we use to measure it will dominate once again, and since time is irreplaceable, the choices we make about investing it will dictate results. Before your routine reasserts its impact on your life, consider how you invested your valuable time last year. What did you accomplish? What worked, and what didn’t? Why is that? Did your accomplishments fulfill your purpose as a business? What unmet goals or objectives …

Read more

3 Ways to Strengthen Emotional Intelligence

by

The better a leader relates to and works with others, the more successful he or she will be in building teams that collaborate, take ownership and deliver results. A leader’s strong interpersonal skills enable the creation of connections and the development of trust necessary to help teams achieve goals and drive change. Understanding how their emotions and actions affect those they lead, and engaging openly and transparently with their team, enables these leaders to guide, challenge and sustain their people. These …

Read more

Doing Work That Matters

by

Doing work that matters is about being vigilant for opportunities to make a difference…for your customers, your associates or your organization. Making something better for one of these groups often creates value for the others.  Doing work that matters is about leading by example… taking ownership of an issue, without authority, in order to make it better. Acting to resolve a problem, rather than complaining about it, demonstrates commitment, generosity and shared accountability that encourages others to contribute.  …

Read more

Cultivating Breakthroughs

by

When heads are down, focused on getting things done, people can get stuck. Looking around, they often find that they are surrounded by people who are just as stuck as they are, so progress slows to a crawl.  That’s because one of the first questions we are taught to ask at work is: “What’s required here?” By meeting the spec, we get evaluated as being diligent, reliable and loyal.  But then, someone sees a different …

Read more

Two Points That Make Performance Discussions Matter

by

Bob Schultek Author of The Gauntlet With the year-end approaching, ’tis the season of performance evaluations. Some organizations have abandoned the regimen of formal performance discussions, while others preserve a review process, often replacing annual discussions with quarterly or semi-annual ones. Opinions and rationales vary about the value of these individual assessments. But in this age of perpetual change, with its organizational demands for greater agility, innovation and improvement, the case for observing some performance management protocol is …

Read more

Winning in the Customer-Driven Market

by

Bob Schultek Author of  The Gauntlet Businesses today operate in a customer-driven market. Everyone and everything is connected, everywhere and all the time. It’s a world of rapid and unpredictable change in which organizations are constantly adapting to meet evolving customers’ needs, never reaching a steady operating state. It’s a time that challenges the historical devotion to organizational bureaucracy as a means for improving results, placing conformity above all other cultural values at the cost of inhibiting initiative and imagination. Many companies believe …

Read more

3 Factors for Mastering Inspiration

by

Bob Schultek Author of The Gauntlet To drive change, leaders inspire those they lead to invest extra time and energy in making a difference for themselves and their organization. They realize that mastering inspiration requires the synchronization of 3 factors: Their people trust that the leader has their back – that he or she understands what motivates and concerns them, is focused on them, and has high, but realistic, expectations of them. The leader is perceived as genuine and credible, consistently …

Read more

Sustaining Change

by

Bob Schultek Author of The Gauntlet You successfully launched an organizational change initiative. You answered questions about what is changing, what will remain as is, and why. You helped people understand how the change will affect them. You collaborated with others to develop and implement a change action plan, and adapted as circumstances evolved. Now you must sustain change momentum. Sustaining change is about changing habits. Aristotle said it best: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, …

Read more

3 Growth Culture Drivers

by

Bob Schultek Author of  The Gauntlet Organizations that sustain profitable growth tend to demonstrate three cultural drivers. They are guided by their Purpose Motive. The organization understands how it contributes to its customers’ strategic progress, beyond providing quality products and exceptional service. Because its people realize how they make a difference, they are motivated to invest extra effort, strengthening offerings and operations to sustain their progress. They are committed to Innovation. The business recognizes that innovation fuels its purpose by …

Read more

Leadership Happens in the Moments

by

Bob Schultek Author of The Gauntlet Every day, there are moments when you can choose to lead. Leadership is more about these moments than it is about accomplishing grand initiatives.  Making a difference is all about these moments. One member of your team might be stuck and need your guidance or suggestions to open another path. When a choice between two possible options is required, rather than immediately making the decision, you ask your team to consider …

Read more