Effective leadership today relies more than ever on influencing others — impacting their ideas, opinions, and actions. While influence has always been a valuable managerial skill, today’s highly collaborative organizations make it essential. Consider how often you have to influence people who don’t even report to you in order to accomplish your objectives. Success depends Continue Reading

In the world of organizational life, there’s no single discussion that causes so much fear and dread on the boss’s side and so much anger and resentment on the direct report’s side than the performance review. I had drinks last week with a senior guy who works for a global financial institution, who had just Continue Reading

Manage Like a Pro: MasterMind Group   In this ever changing world of management, keeping ahead of the curve is the biggest challenge.  Join us in our Manage Like a Pro: MasterMind group.  Each month we will discuss current management issues and how they relate to you and your team.  Additionally, I will be available Continue Reading

If you ask managers to name their favorite sport, you’ll hear a wide variety of answers: Football, baseball, tennis… But what they won’t tell you is the one sport that all managers play the most: The Game of Reorganization. Managers love to reorganize at almost every level. Whether triggered by a leadership transition, a fundamental Continue Reading

What does it take for an ineffective manager to become a highly effective leader? Talk to 50 top CEOs, management consultants, and academics, and you’ll get a different answer from each. There are countless books, models, and formulas for success. But the truth is this: Leadership transformation is deeply dependent on context. Everyone follows his Continue Reading

Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish new year, the time when we think about our past year and plan for our next. What do I want to repeat? What do I want to do differently? I usually start with everything I want to do differently. And the list is long. I eat way too much — Continue Reading

With only a few days left until we usher in the New Year, you’re going to be bombarded with lists of things to do and not to do. Most of them will contain the same tired rhetoric from years past. These lists du jour will simply rehash and spin items from prior years while offering Continue Reading

Never out of touch Hyperconnectivity—the impulse to always be connected—captured a large number of headlines this year. The statistics are staggering. Cisco reported in July of 2011 that the number of devices connected to the Internet exceeded the number of people populating the entire planet in 2008. Cisco also predicted that by the end of Continue Reading

In my experience, the management teams that lead the best performing businesses are those that incorporate at least three key strategic questions into almost every operational and status discussion. What are Your Teams Talking About? The gross majority of the dialogue in an organization is about How, and Who and When and the important What Continue Reading