Our last posting talked about BHAGs (Big Hairy Audacious Goals) and we asked, “What’s Your New Year’s BHAG?” But achieving a BHAG is just like keeping a New Year’s resolution: it’s all in the execution. It’s all in the doing. It’s one thing to dream up a BHAG, it’s quite another to put the wheels
“In your business decisions, risk only money . . . never people or relationships.”
Business is all about relationships, isn’t it? We need strong relationships with: Employees. We set policies and give direction, but it’s our employees who do the work and get stuff done. We will get their best, most energetic, most creative efforts only if we’ve nurtured the right relationships with them. Vendors. If we’ve taken the
How does your leadership style make people feel?
Bruna Martinuzzi is a consultant who specializes in teaching leadership and presentation skills. She is also the author of two books, and while I have not read either book, I have read an article she published recently with the rather long-winded title, “If your leadership aura could use some polishing, try these 7 tips for
“Profits Aren’t Everything. They’re the Only Thing.”
Legendary coach Vince Lombardi admonishes us, “Winning isn’t the most important thing. It’s the only thing.” Now George Cloutier, CEO of American Management Services, has taken a page from Lombardi’s playbook with his own book titled, “Profits Aren’t Everything, They’re the Only Thing.” As hard-headed business people, it’s pretty difficult for us to argue with
Are you a Visionary or an Integrator?
In his book, “Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business,” Gino Wickman envisions an organizational chart with the guy at the top as the “Visionary” and the guy immediately below him as the “Integrator.” In Wickman’s model, the Visionary is the company’s creative sparkplug, the guy who sees opportunities and possibilities and is always pushing
“Accountability breeds response-ability.”
In our last posting, we talked about execution . . . about the need for meticulous planning, thorough and detailed communication of our plans, and after-the-fact review to determine what went right and what didn’t in an effort to continuously improve our execution skills and abilities. We probably should have preceded that discussion with one
Does fear of failure motivate or paralyze you?
There was an interesting article published recently in the Chicago Tribune. In it, a member of Chicago’s iconic business clan, the Pritzkers, talked about failure and the role it has played in shaping his life. While we have discussed failure here in the past, it’s a subject worth revisiting from time to time, if only
“The art of communication is the language of leadership.”
Get your workforce engaged! (104) In this fourth and final installment of our series on developing an “engaged” workforce, we’re going talk about the need for effective communication. We touched on communication in the first installment of this series when we said, “Your values, mission, and vision need to be in writing, and they need
Put the right people on the bus . . .
This is the third installment of a series on developing an “engaged” workforce . . . that is, a workforce that energetically supports your company and its goals. In the first installment, we talked about the importance of clearly communicating the company’s mission, vision, values, and culture. Essentially, those four things (with apologies to business
