It’s one thing to listen to a speaker. It’s another thing to do something about what you learned when you return to the office—assuming the speaker said something worth doing. Last week I delivered three presentations to communication professionals attending a world conference in Washington, D.C. One was a three-hour workshop focused on reinventing the… Read more
Ask ten experts on leadership which skills are most needed for leadership success and you’ll likely get 10 different answers. In an effort to clarify this murky topic, an exhaustive McKinsey & Co. study suggests that a small subset of leadership skills does indeed closely correlate with success, especially among frontline leaders. The study involved… Read more
Communication. That soft, touchy-feely stuff. You can’t really measure it, right? Wrong! We use many ways to measure organizational effectiveness, but if there’s one best tool to measure communication inside an organization, it’s the value to cost assessment (V2CA). More than one CEO has likened it to portfolio management–managing a portfolio of communication activities just… Read more
When something doesn’t feel right, or when things aren’t adding up, go to gemba, Japanese for the real place–where the work gets done. Go to the sales floor, office floor, showroom floor, surgical floor, warehouse floor, plant floor, truck floor. That’s where you’ll find the problems, what’s causing them and what to do about it…. Read more
Measurement is a powerful communication device. What you count counts. What you measure tells people what’s important. It drives actions people take and the results they create. When you try to measure too many things it may tell the people you lack priorities because “everything’s important.”
“I’m crazy busy!” That’s what we all say we are these days. But when is “crazy busy” a waste of time? Well, how often do you manage your time according to the value it adds to your business? An organization’s role is to create value for its customers and continuously improve the process, so more… Read more
Leaders can talk all they want about the need for people to work together, but if the numbers tell those people to work in silos they will. The “do communication” will trump the “say communication” nearly every time. What counts is what you count. Among the CEO’s I work with, getting people to work together… Read more
I found this current Harvard Business Review article entitled, “Are You Ready to Rebound” instructive. It focuses on identifying new opportunities to improve business execution through: Strong operational hydraulics Rewards for performance, not mediocrity Core values with teeth The right conversations Adventurous leaders in key positions Constant pressure versus heroic efforts It uses a straightforward and… Read more
I alerted our Leadership Report readers to this new CBS “reality” TV show last week. It came after last night’s Super Bowl. I couldn’t handle it after watching such a great game. Sort of like chasing a perfectly grilled prime ribeye with a cheap white zinfandel. (Is there an expensive white zin?) For those who were… Read more
Way more than enough has been written about the Tiger Woods episode of late, but it’s one more reminder that in good and bad times, always tell the truth and do it damned fast. There is little if anything to be gained by dragging out a response. If you’ve got to get the lawyers involved do it only with the PR people sitting with the lawyers as equals at the table. Decide fast and get on with it. Opportunity follows speed.