At some point in your leadership life, if you haven’t already, you’ll be called on to make a big presentation. And that presentation will be critically important to your being perceived as a serious leader, your being promoted to a higher paying position, your closing a lucrative deal, or all of the above. How do […]
Read MoreAll leadership roles are not the same. And while we might agree with that statement on paper, in practice we violate it regularly. In practice we promote a high performing individual contributor—a leading salesperson or a leading researcher—to the role of frontline manager and are surprised when that person struggles to win the support of […]
Read MoreClimbing a mountain is hard work. Some mountains, however, are harder to climb than others. Compare climbing Mary’s Peak, a popular hike a few miles from my house that tops out at 4,000 feet above sea level, with climbing Mount Everest, which rises to 29,000 feet. You prepare very differently for a climb up Mary’s Peak […]
Read MoreEighteen hours is all you have. That is, if you’re climbing Mt. Everest. Climbers begin their ascent from basecamp, conveniently located at 26,000 feet above sea level, in the ungodly hour of 2:00 AM. They climb through the night and early morning, reaching the summit about mid-day. Then they scramble back down before sunset to the […]
Read MoreBusy, busy, busy, busy, busy. That’s the word that describes the life of every business leader I know. Busy. Crazy busy. That’s the word that probably describes your life as well. It’s the reality of the 24/7/365 world in which we live. We can’t stop it, but we can control it. We can master it. […]
Read MoreEveryone has had this happen to them. You’re taking a shower, driving the car, walking the dog and—wham—an idea pops into your head that’s a perfect solution to a pressing problem. A solution that comes to you in a flash: not by thinking about the problem, but by doing the exact opposite. What’s going on? It […]
Read MoreWe had come to the end of two very intense days. Whiteboards had been scribbled on, erased, and scribbled on again and again. Flip chart pages stuck to the wall like debris from a battlefield. The executives in the room sat bleary-eyed and exhausted. I had seen this before. I had caused this before. And […]
Read MoreDamned if you do and damned if you don’t. That’s the dilemma facing leaders dealing with a strong personality on their team. If you do try to coach the strong personality, the whole thing can blow up in your face, causing more trouble than it’s worth. If you don’t try to coach the strong personality, […]
Read MoreOne of the most impressive minds in the consulting world today, Alan Weiss, famously wrote that the oft-used planning tool called the SWOT Analysis is “insipid and simplistic” and using it “ought to get any consultant thrown out into the street.” Tell me how you really feel! Alan is mostly right, but partly wrong. To […]
Read More38, 53, and 72. Note these numbers and note them well. It was 38 degrees on January 28, 1986 when Challenger flight 51-L launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The region had been experiencing unseasonably low temperatures that delayed this shuttle mission time and time again. Pressure was mounting, both from […]
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