Winning at Chaos: How to Succeed When it All Falls Apart
“How can you prepare to succeed in the midst of chaos?” Much has been written about the big strategic decisions before the massive D-Day invasion of World War II. What sometimes gets missed are the thousands of little, tactical decisions made on the ground afterwards. Yet those were what ultimately enabled success. Allied planners knew […]
Don’t Fear the Elephants
Nobody said he was a great mathematician. But he may be the greatest general you never heard of. His actions over 2,000 years ago are a great example of how we can influence our future by the way we react to what’s coming at us today.
Book Notes: It Worked for Me
I hope you have problems. That’s a good thing, really. A book I read recently cast a whole new light on what it means to have problems as a leader, and what you should do about them. Today we’ll talk about why having problems can be good, and how you can handle them in a […]
How to Build Team Culture One Test at a Time
We all recognize that building team culture is important We know a strong team culture can have a huge positive impact on team effectiveness, employee engagement, and overall productivity. The question is, where does it come from? How do we build it? To me, the short answer is that culture is shaped most powerfully by […]
When the Plan Fails: 5 Things to Do When it All Falls Through
There’s the plan, and then there’s what actually happens. Sometimes one resembles the other, but many times not. What do you do when you find an enormous gap between the two and everything seems to be falling apart? Today we’ll look at a high-risk plan that failed badly, see what the people involved did about it, […]
Snake Bit! A Case Study in Making Haste Slowly
In the heat of a crisis, as leaders we tend to want to jump in and start making decisions. The situation calls for boldness, decisiveness; now is our chance to rise to the occasion. To fail to act immediately may be interpreted as weakness. But if we act hastily we risk making bad decisions and making things worse […]
Managing the Boss: How to Deliver Bad News
No one likes to deliver bad news to the boss. But how you present a problem to them will have a lot to do with how they react to it. It’s more than just “managing the boss” – it’s seeing things from their perspective. Here is a way you can break the news, help to […]
How to Respond to Crisis: Four Steps for Leaders
As a leader you will have to respond to crisis. The plan will get off track, a key person will not show up, the weather will change, key assumptions will be proven wrong. It’s inevitable. How you respond will determine whether you overcome the crisis, or become a victim of it. Today we’ll talk about four […]
Surviving a Leadership Vacuum
Things don’t always turn out the way we plan. Key people show up late, come down with the flu, miss the flight. Suddenly there is a leadership vacuum. People start to drift, time is lost, confusion and frustration set in. Something needs to happen quickly to get things back on track. Here’s a recent story […]