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Jim Clemmer Articles

Guest post by: Jim Clemmer

The View from the Front Line - Click To Read Article
Employees who deal directly with the public are valuable players in building a customer-focused organization. Their potential, however, is often overlooked. Only a tiny fraction of customer complaints and suggestions ever reaches top management's attention.

Thermometer Manager or Thermostat Leader? - Click To Read Article
The late 19th century Irish playwright, critic, and social reformer, George Bernard Shaw, had a lot of useful things to say about personal effectiveness. A few of his comments have hung on my mirror or been posted in my day planner over the years. This one speaks to a core management-leadership choice we all have; "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends upon the unreasonable man."

This Crazy Period of Constant Change is Normal - Click To Read Article
In the middle of a meeting with a few colleagues I caught myself saying, "Once we get through this crazy period and things get back to normal..." Then it hit me. I had been saying something like that for at least a year or two. As we scrambled to move into a strong market leadership position we were initiating endless waves of changes and (we hoped) improvements throughout the organization. I interrupted myself with the question, "Do we seem to be consistently talking about change as if it's a temporary condition to be endured until calmer times return?"

Three Basic Steps to Focus on Customers and Partners - Click To Read Article
Getting customers or partners together in focus groups is generally the most productive. But we can gather expectations through individual interviews as well. We can gather perceptions and expectations from competitors' customers, people who've stopped doing business with us, and those who could but don't use our products or services now. We should always start with a blank sheet of paper, never a preconceived list. This begins by asking our focus group to brainstorm the factors most important to them when using our products or services.

Three Core Questions That Define Organizational Culture - Click To Read Article
Over the years we've been involved in too many "vernacular engineering" debates as management teams argue about whether the statement they've been crafting is a vision, a mission, a statement of values and goals, or the like. Often these philosophical labeling debates are like trying to pick the flyspecks out of the pepper. Unless we're lexicographers and our company is in the dictionary business, we shouldn't worry about the precise definition of vision, mission, values, or whatever we may be calling the words we're using to define who we are and where we're trying to go.

Timeless Leadership Principles in a Changing World - Click To Read Article
But the more things change, the more they really do stay the same. Those settlers were powerful leaders. The principles that both drove and guided their lives are as relevant today. They faced up to tough choices. They lived their values. They followed their dreams. They learned and adapted. They mobilized others to build a strong community. They persisted in the face of many heart-breaking disasters. They committed their lives to a greater cause.

True to Our Souls - Click To Read Article
One of the biggest social movements of our time is society's search for meaning. Books on spirituality, soul, and personal growth are continually popping up on bestseller lists. The Internet is filling with similar sites and discussion groups. Numerous surveys show that the vast majority of people in almost every society in the world believe in some higher power. Conferences on spirituality in the workplace and soulful leadership have become regular events attracting thousands of meaning seekers.

Two Keys to Adding Values - Click To Read Article
Just about every company today aims to be "value-driven." Executives are pushing their organizations to create grand statements, often known as "core values," "guiding principles" or "aspirations." Designing these lofty declarations are a good idea. Examples abound of high-performing organizations that have replaced stifling rules and policies with fundamental values supporting the culture they desire.

Use Strategic Imperatives to Set Improvement Priorities - Click To Read Article
It was a story with a plot line that's becoming all too familiar. I was meeting with the vice president of a large service organization and his quality improvement support staff. They were frustrated. After a few years of educating thousands of people in their organization, forming and training teams, mapping, analyzing, and "reengineering" a multitude of processes, and "empowering" everyone to improve quality and customer service, little was happening.

Values-Based Leadership Has Huge Pay-Offs - Click To Read Article
A number of studies that have shown over the years that companies with "high standards of ethical behavior," "shared values," or who are "socially conscious" have much higher than average performance. That's because when a team or organization identifies and lives its core values.

Vision at Work - Click To Read Article
Strong leaders make people hopeful about the future. As editor and writer Norman Cousins reflects, "The capacity for hope is the most significant fact of life. It provides human beings with a sense of destination and the energy to get started." Hope is a key activator. When faced with major changes, leaders optimistically focus everyone's attention on the possibilities. They look for signs of progress and reinforce those to build forward momentum. A compelling vision of the team or organization's preferred future keeps people from obsessing over present-day obstacles or getting stuck in the past.

Visioning Harnesses the Power of Our Pictures - Click To Read Article
I've been studying and trying to apply the power of positive pictures for over two decades now. These skills, habits, and techniques are often called visioning, imagery, and visualization. And they have a power for change, improvement, and energy creation that we're only beginning to understand.

Visions Provide the Energizing Context to Reach Our Goals - Click To Read Article
Like mission and vision statements and values, goal setting and visioning labels often get confused and used interchangeably. Generally that doesn't matter. As long as the people on our teams and in our organizations are clear and consistent with their meanings and approaches, we shouldn't get hung up on definitions and jargon.

What We Get is What We See - Click To Read Article
Your ability to develop an energizing vision for your team or organization determines whether you're be a high performing leader or a Technomanager, technician, supervisor, project manager, administrator, or bureaucrat. At the heart of leading others is your ability to develop and communicate a clear and compelling picture of your team or organization's preferred future.

What's Really Important? - Click To Read Article
The legendary inventor, Thomas Edison, had just come through a period of exceptionally hard work and even longer hours than normal. At dinner his wife said, "You've been working too hard with no breaks. You need a vacation." "But where would I go?" he asked her. "Think about where you'd rather be than any other place on earth," she replied. Edison thought for a few moments then said, "All right, I'll go tomorrow morning." The next day he was back to work in his laboratory.

When Choosing Our Thoughts We Choose Our Future - Click To Read Article
A wise old sage hosted a dinner. Toward the end of the meal, everyone was given fortune cookies and told that they're holding their future in their hands. The guests eagerly opened them to read the words of wisdom they contained. The paper slips inside each cookie were blank.

Why Most Change Programs and Improvement Initiatives Fail - Click To Read Article
Many team and organization change and improvement efforts are lost or badly bewildered. Decades of studies have consistently shown that 50-70 percent are failing. There are as many reasons that improvement endeavors lose their way, as there are people, teams, and organizations trying to improve.

Why Most Training Fails - Click To Read Article
Most organizations use their training investments about as strategically as they deploy their office supplies spending. And the impact on customer satisfaction, cost containment or quality improvement is just as useless. One of the biggest causes of wasted training dollars is ineffective methods. Too often, companies rely on lectures ("spray and pray"), inspirational speeches or videos, discussion groups and simulation exercises.

Why Real Leaders Pump Gas - Click To Read Article
Chief executives give great speeches on the importance of quality, leadership, teamwork, and employee participation. But in improving organization performance, as in golf, it's the follow-through that makes the difference. Consider the case of one Canadian company that had been "doing quality" for about two years. It followed the textbook perfectly. Trainers and facilitators delivered introductory workshops to the 1,500 employees. Enthusiasm and interest began to build as hundreds of suggestions poured in.

Why Smart Managers Master the Art of Listening Well - Click To Read Article
Many companies that talk passionately about being market-driven and customer-focused are overlooking one crucial ingredient - the ability to listen well. John McDonnell, chairman and chief executive of aircraft manufacturer McDonnell Douglas Corp. of St. Louis, summed up the problem: "We did not always listen to what our customers had to say before telling them what they wanted."

Wise Managers Treat Layoffs as Last Resort - Click To Read Article
Despite all the trendy rhetoric about the importance of people, leadership, and values, far too many managers treat people in their organizations with about as much care and concern as so many numbers on a financial statement. They are just one more set of assets to be managed. These just happen to have skin wrapped around them. Phrases like "head count" dehumanize and objectify people. That's how we talked about cattle on the farm where I grew up. And that's exactly how too many managers view "their people."

With All My Heart and Soul - Click To Read Article
Spirit and meaning is a missing link in many lives, teams, and organizations. Many who have material prosperity live in spiritual poverty. That's what's driving the rapidly growing number of meaning seekers in society. We want to know that our lives count for something. We want to make a difference. Our work and our lives become ever more meaningful the more they are in harmony with who we are and touch the very core of why we exist. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.

Yield of Dreams - Click To Read Article
n the early 1950s, Florence Chadwick became the first woman to swim the English Channel in both directions. During her first attempt, she had been swimming for hours and was getting very near to the English coast. That's when the seas turned much colder and heavy swells developed. A dense fog settled in blocking everything from view with a chilly wet blanket. As Florence's pace slowed and energy drained, her mother called through the fog from one of the small boats following behind, "Come on, Florence, you can make it. It's only a little further."

You Can't Build a Team or Organization Different from You - Click To Read Article
Too many managers who aspire to lead and develop others haven't learned how to lead and develop themselves. They are trying to build organizations or provide services that are different than they are. These well-intentioned managers are trying to improve their teams or organizations without improving themselves. Many seem to be living along the lines of Mark Twain's observation, "Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits."

Successful Failures - Click To Read Article
In a small pub in the highlands of Scotland, a group of fishermen gathered one afternoon to swap tales over a round of ale. One of them stretched his arms apart to show the big one that got away. At that very point, a waitress walked past carrying a tray of full ale glasses. The fisherman's wild gestures sent the tray smashing against the wall. The dark brew splashed on the white wall of the pub and began running down. The waitress and the fisherman tried to wipe the mess off the wall, but it had left an ugly dark stain.

Systems and Structure Pathways and Pitfalls - Click To Read Article
Effective systems follow, serve, and support rather than control, direct, and dictate. The central structure and systems alignment question is "for whose convenience is your organization designed?" Is it to serve customers and those producing for or serving them?

Team Spirit Built from the Top - Click To Read Article
Team spirit is the catalyst every organization needs to achieve outstanding performance. Strategic plans, marketing, technology and capital investment are clearly important, but emotional commitment of the people using the tools and executing the plans is what determines whether companies sink or soar.

Technomanagement: A Deadly Mix of Bureaucracy and Technology - Click To Read Article
Far too many organizations are ruled by bureaucrats and technocrats either in management or staff support roles. One of their (often unconscious) driving motives is to "eliminate the human factor." They feel that their technology, systems, and processes would work so much better if it weren't for all the people always messing things up.

Test Your Career Health - Click To Read Article
Many of us invest time once a year for an annual checkup of our physical health. But what about a regular career checkup? Canadian author and literary icon, Robertson Davies, once wrote, "Weigh up your life once a year. If you find you are getting short weight, change your life. You will usually find that the solution lies in your own hands."

That Empower Word Again - Click To Read Article
Revisit and revise your values every few years to keep them alive and relevant. They can too easily become stale, stifling, or just ignored. In The Achieve Group's (my first training and consulting company) early years, we wrote a three-page statement of Achieve's core values that were later named ACT - Attention to Service, Commitment to Quality, and Trust through Value.

The Choice is Ours - Click To Read Article
A sociologist was researching the long-term effects of family violence. He interviewed two sons of an alcoholic and highly abusive father. Both brothers were now in their sixties. One son looked back on a life of alcoholism, violence, failed marriages, joblessness, prison terms, suicide attempts, and poverty.

The Coach's Playbook - Click To Read Article
Where do you find the highest levels of employee retention and productivity, customer satisfaction, and profitability? According to a major Gallup study (of more than 1.5 million employees across more than 87,000 divisions or work units), the answer can be found in how positively team members respond to 12 key indicators of the health of their workplace. These statements include factors such as recognition, clarity of goals, opportunities to use individual strengths, and having effective tools and equipment.

The Dynamic Power of Hope - Click To Read Article
Someone once said to the bestselling author and television pastor, Robert Schuller, "I hope you live to see all your dreams fulfilled." He replied, "I hope not, because if I live and all my dreams are fulfilled, I'm dead. It's unfulfilled dreams that keep you alive."

The Law of Improvement Displacement - Click To Read Article
In a dingy, unused warehouse down by the waterfront, a real estate agent found a curious old machine covered in cobwebs, grime, and decades of dust. As he was wiping the dust away and inspecting the old contraption, he found a few pieces of yellowed paper in a cracked leather pouch. He chuckled softly to himself when he pulled them out and found they were entitled "Operating Instructions for The Perpetual Money Machine."

The Many Faces of Love - Click To Read Article
Like leadership, love has many faces and forms. Both are states of being that defy easy definitions or how-to formulas. Pianist, Arthur Rubinstein, describes one face of love, "I'm passionately involved in life: I love its change, its color, its movement. To be alive, to be able to see, to walk, to have houses, music, paintings - it's all a miracle." Author and lecturer Leo Buscaglia outlines another face of love when talking about a contest he was asked to judge. The purpose of the contest was to find the most caring child.

The Moose on the Table - Click To Read Article
Imagine a team meeting around a conference-room table. They are reviewing operations and making plans. Charts are reviewed, slides are projected, documents are handed out, and calculations are made. Now imagine that standing in the middle of the conference-room table is a great big moose.

The Motivation Myth - Click To Read Article
After six years at Universal Pictures, Harry Cohn formed Columbia Pictures in 1924. During the following decades he ran the company with an iron fist. His image as a tyrant was reinforced by the riding whip he kept near his desk to crack for emphasis. Cohn's form of "motivation" led to the greatest creative turnover of any major studio. At his funeral in 1958, one observer suggested that the 1,300 attendees "had not come to bid farewell, but to make sure he was actually dead."

The Myth of the Born Leader - Click To Read Article
The final level of mastery is to make it look natural. That's a key reason so many people believe achievement comes from winning the gene pool - either you're born with it or you're not. A tiny number of athletes, performers, artists, musicians, or leaders succeed without really trying. But the sad reverse is often even more true. We all know people with tremendous natural talent who do very little with it. More common are ordinary people with average talent who take it to extraordinary levels.

The Newest Pet Rock Needs a Firm Foundation - Click To Read Article
Process re-engineering is on its way to becoming the latest pet rock of management techniques. The reasons for its faddish popularity are clear: it is a way of tackling the enormous problem of flattening our overbloated, inefficient bureaucracies and streamlining the way work is done.

The Pause that Refreshes - Click To Read Article
As we approach the end of the year, it's my time to assess what I have achieved during this year, how I have grown as an individual, and how much I have contributed to my family and those I serve. After assessing this year's performance and celebrating significant achievements, it's then time to look ahead to next year. I complete this cycle for my work and family life.

The Power of Passion - Click To Read Article
The French call it joie de vivre, which means joy or love of life. We wrestled long and hard with putting into words the core values that brought us together and define the kind of organization The CLEMMER Group aspires to be. The first cornerstone of our four core values is Passion.

The Power of Recognition, Appreciation, and Celebration - Click To Read Article
Arden planted a 50-acre field of wheat that was now golden brown and very full for harvest. It was a sight to touch the heart of any farmer. Uncle Harry came to visit. Arden proudly took him out to look at the field of wheat. Harry looked around, put his hand over his eyes to peer into the distance, and asked "Is that a stone on the hill?" pointing to a boulder too large to move in the middle of the field. He said nothing about the field of wheat. Arden was crushed by his lack of enthusiasm.

The Purpose-Profit Paradox - Click To Read Article
Few people today want to buy from, work for, or partner with a company that's only out for itself. That's like taking a set of elaborate architectural drawings for a huge, luxurious dream home into your team or organization and saying, "if you all work real hard, someday this will be all mine." A few years ago we came across a mixed up manufacturer that had produced a slick little logo and published this mission statement - "In Pursuit of Profits." We haven't heard of that company for a few years now. I don't think they're in business any more.

The Tyranny of the Urgent Can Cause Priority Overload - Click To Read Article
A frantic manager burst into a travel agency and exclaimed, "I need an airplane ticket immediately!" "Where would you like to go?", the travel agent asked. "I don't care, just get me on a plane. I've got business everywhere," was the desperate reply. Time management author and consultant, R. Alec Mackenzie once observed, "Urgency engulfs the manager; yet the most urgent task is not always the most important.

Strong Leaders are the Real Deal - Click To Read Article
We all know that strong leaders are the real deal. They embody the leadership clichés like "walk the talk" or "lead by example." Strong leaders maintain a close connection between what they say and what they do. Their video is in sync with their audio. The vision (and values and purpose) they set out for their team or organization is no different from what they set out for their own lives. Leaders don't try to make others into something that they are not themselves.

Strong Leadership Builds on a Bedrock of Strong Values - Click To Read Article
Early in my career I found work that was a great fit for my skills and interests. I grew and moved through the company to ever-higher levels of responsibility. I was especially lucky to be mentored by a senior manager who coached and developed my skills, and brought out more potential in me than I realized I had at the time. Her trust and faith in me built my confidence and a strong foundation for future growth.

Successful Change and Improvement Needs Balanced Improvement Planning - Click To Read Article
As Yogi Berra would say, "It was déja vu all over again." Five years earlier I had conducted a few introductory service/quality improvement workshops for the senior management group and head office support people of a large distribution company. Performance and feedback surveys were conducted and reviewed during these and follow up workshops. The company clearly had problems with sagging morale and customer service, rising costs from inefficient processes and quality problems, and low innovation levels.

Successful Change Flows from Learning, Growth, and Development - Click To Read Article
Change can't be managed. Change can be ignored, resisted, responded to, capitalized on, and created. But it can't be managed and made to march to some orderly step-by-step process. However, whether change is a threat or an opportunity depends on how prepared we are. Whether we become change victims or victors depends on our readiness for change.

Strong Leaders are Strong Communicators - Click To Read Article
It was the dead of winter in the middle of a very cold snap. As we approached departure time, judging by all the activity outside the plane, we weren't likely to leave on time. In a few minutes the captain announced, "You can see a lot of activity on our left wing. This is a maintenance crew trying to replace a defective fuel pump. We find it's best to fix a problem like that on the ground before we're in the air. The good news is that there is another fuel pump available here at the airport. The bad news is that it will delay our departure by about 30 minutes."

Stepping Back to Step Ahead Through Reviewing and Assessing - Click To Read Article
Our performance results are determined by what we finish, not by what we start. But whether it's diet and fitness, investments, leadership development, or organization change and improvement efforts, many people search for the quick and easy technique or approach. When the latest improvement fad doesn't create a quick transformation, the next hot book, guru, theory, or change program beckons.

Stop Managing and Start Leading - Click To Read Article
Ask any group of managers if they view themselves as an elite within their organization and you can be sure they will deny it. You'll hear comments such as: "I have an open-door policy" and "I take pride in always being accessible and approachable." And in most cases, these managers will really believe what they are saying. What they don't realize, however, are the many invisible barriers - the "glass doors" - they put in place.

Stop Whining and Start Leading - Click To Read Article
We all know people who suffer from "Victimitis" - the poor-little-me syndrome whose verbal symptoms include: "They are doing it to me again," "There's nothing I can do," "It's all their fault." Indeed, many supervisors and middle managers agree that Victimitis is a big problem at work.

Stop Working and Start Living - Click To Read Article
Years ago I worked in a company with a powerful and emotionally intelligent CEO. A favorite motto of his was, "If you love what you're doing, you never have to work again." The wisdom of those words had strong and lasting effect on me. I hate work. It really is a disgusting four-letter word.

Strategic Measurements Guide Change and Improvement - Click To Read Article
"Crude measures of the right things are better than precise measures of the wrong things." Here are five core measurement areas that provide broad and balanced feedback loops for assessing and improving organization performance.

Strategic Planning Smothers Innovation - Click To Read Article
From a standing start, a financial services company had two decades of very strong growth. They were entrepreneurial and opportunistic. New products, services, and distribution channels evolved and developed as the leaders passionately pulled the organization toward their vision. But its growth wasn't always a pretty sight.

Reflection and Renewal - Click To Read Article
During the 18th century, two explorers set out with small flights of ships to find the fabled Northwest Passage that cuts through the Arctic Circle across the top of North America connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. It was widely agreed that the first to discover this elusive passage to China and India would find fame and fortune. Captain John Smith was bold and impatient. He believed that speed was critical to winning the race against the competition led by Captain Henry Jones.

Retaining Top People - Click To Read Article
Attracting and retaining talented people is a growing challenge for many organizations. Demographic projections show that this issue will become ever more critical as the large group of people in the "baby boom" begins to retire. Competition for the best people will intensify. The most successful organizations will be those "magnet companies" that attract and hang on to good people.

Reward and Recognition Pathways and Pitfalls - Click To Read Article
Don't use money to try and shape behavior or boost performance. It rarely works. If you think it has in the past, what happened when you took the carrot away? No doubt, performance slipped and you were left with stimulus-dependent people looking for progressively bigger carrots. Unless people feel compensation and bonus systems are a major block, leave them alone.

Reward and Recognition Reinforce Paternalism or Partnerships - Click To Read Article
It seemed like a good idea at the time. As The Achieve Group (my first training and consulting company) was rapidly growing and hiring new people, I put together a sales incentive and recognition program. It had increasingly bigger prizes, bonuses, travel, and awards with each sales level or "club" achieved. At one of our meetings, I excitedly unveiled my new reward and recognition program.

Review, Assess, Celebrate, and Refocus: Personal Pathways and Pitfalls - Click To Read Article
If applicable, you and your life partner should get away at least once a year to review, assess, celebrate, and refocus the progress toward your vision, values, purpose, and goals. Using a journal to reflect on and record your deepest thoughts is especially important if you're going through a tough period and you don't have someone or a group of close people that you can talk and reflect with. At this point in the annual improvement process, look back through your journal entries to review and assess your progress.

Ringing True to Me - Click To Read Article
Once five fingers stood side by side on a hand. They were all friends. Where one went, the others went. They worked together. They played together. They ate and washed and wrote and did their chores together.

Seeing Only What Is or What Could Be - Click To Read Article
Joel was a realist. He prided himself in being practical and "down to earth." He was very skeptical about new ideas and changes. "You'll have to prove it to me. I'll believe it when I see it," he often said to his kids or team members. He believed that kids today were lazy, sloppy, and untrustworthy. Reading the newspaper after supper, he'd finish a story about some horrible crime or new violence with another comment on his pet theory that society was on a slippery slope of sin and destruction. At work, Joel often made cynical jokes about the stupidity of management and the direction they were trying to move the organization.

Seeing the World as We Are - Click To Read Article
We find what we focus upon. Whether I think my world is full of richness and opportunity, or garbage and despair - I am right. It's exactly like that - because that's my point of focus. By focusing there, I turn my expectations into reality. My focus is intertwined with the context of my life.

Signs of Stagnation - Click To Read Article
Personal growth, continuous improvement, lifelong learning...these are mantras for many people today. But good intentions often don't become action. Recognizing when we've slipped into the stagnant waters of stability and certainty isn't easy. Like putting on weight, it happens so gradually until one day we notice how out of shape we've become.

Soft Skills, Hard Results (Part 1) - Click To Read Article
Leadership deals with the world of emotions and feelings. It is more of an art than a science. Like artists, leaders have the ability to share their vision of the world. Leaders influence our perceptions and help us look at situations in new ways. These skills - and the leadership principles that guide their development - are critical to the success of an organization or team.

Soft Skills, Hard Results (Part 2) - Click To Read Article
There's not a lot we can do about the processing power between our ears. For the most part, we're stuck with whatever intelligence quotient (IQ) we've got. The good news for many of us is that our IQ is dramatically less important to success and happiness than our emotional intelligence (EQ). What's even better is that EQ, unlike IQ, can be improved.

Leadership Keys to Harnessing the Power of Teams - Click To Read Article
A scout leader was trying to lift a fallen tree from the path. His pack gathered around to watch him struggle. "Are you using all your strength?" one of the scouts asked. "Yes!" was the exhausted and exasperated response. "No. You are not using all your strength," the scout replied. "You haven't asked us to help you." Good managers have always fostered teamwork. But highly effective leaders are now showing the performance power of building a team-based organization.

Leadership on Purpose - Click To Read Article
If the main reason for a company's existence is profit, it is often not very profitable. When a company is fixated with the bottom line, there's a good chance it won't survive. The dollar sign isn't a cause. It doesn't stir the soul. Operating margins and return on investment don't excite and inspire. As an ultimate objective on its own, the pursuit of profits is hollow and unsatisfying. It is one-dimensional, without depth. It comes from, and leads to, the naked selfishness of "what's in it for me."

Leading from the Inside Out - Click To Read Article
A leader may or may not be appointed to head a group or organization - to be put in charge. Whether formally in the role or not, a leader makes things happen. A leader takes action. A leader doesn't say something must be done about this, a leader does something about it. Leadership is a verb, not a noun. Leadership is action, not a position. Leadership is defined by what we do, not the role we are in. We all need to be leaders, regardless of the roles we may be in.

Life Accumulates in Our Personal Choice Accounts - Click To Read Article
A farmer prayed fervently every night during harvest season for a fine crop. He pleaded for crops as fine as his neighbors. After one night of particularly strong lamenting and pleading, the Lord finally replied. "Ben," He exclaimed, "How can I give you a harvest? You didn't plant any seeds last spring."

Living on Purpose - Click To Read Article
Three women are killed in a car crash on the way home from a weekend excursion. Their souls are immediately whisked off to heaven for an orientation session. Each one was asked, "When you are in your casket and friends and family are mourning your death, what would you like to hear them say about you?" The first woman said, "I'd like to hear them say that I was a great entrepreneur and a terrific mother." The second woman responded, "I would like to hear that I was a wonderful wife and school teacher who made a huge difference in our children of tomorrow." The last woman replied, "I would love to hear them say...LOOK, SHE'S MOVING!!!!!"

Looking Back to Look Ahead - Click To Read Article
I am often asked to predict the future of leadership. That's a dangerous business. I am reluctant to join the economists, futurists, and others who live by the crystal ball...and soon learn to eat ground glass. However, as we enter the new millennium we can look back through history and discover the timeless leadership principles that have guided successful societies, organizations, and individuals through uncertain and rapidly changing times. Inner (leading ourselves) and outer (leading others) leadership has never been more critical.

Many Managers Disempower Themselves - Click To Read Article
In our leadership workshops most team leaders, supervisors, and middle managers agree whole-heartedly that far too many people in their organization succumb to the Victimitis Virus - the poor-little-me syndrome. This tendency is often revealed by statements like "they are doing it to me again," "there's nothing I can do," or "it's all their fault." Looking right past themselves, these managers then look for ways to change everyone else.

Mastering Change Through Continuous Growth, Learning, and Improvement - Click To Read Article
To master or thrive on change, we need to embrace perpetual growth and development, continuous learning, and constant improvement. That's the stuff true change leadership is made of. The surface issue is our rate and type of change. The deeper issue is whether we are learning and improving so that change is another step forward in our progress to a brighter future. Are we steadily striving to build a better self, team, organization, and world? I've seen very few effective, and especially lasting, "change programs." But I have seen, and personally experienced, the power and payoffs of constant and habitual personal, team, and organization learning and improvement.

Matching Team Types and Focus - Click To Read Article
Managers' growing understanding of the power of a team-based organization has created an explosion of teams. We're now seeing a profusion of high-involvement teams, high-performance teams, corrective action teams, service and quality improvement teams, project teams, task forces, steering councils, process management and improvement teams, problem solving teams, cross-functional teams, departmental teams, work teams, regional or branch teams, self-directed and self-managed teams, semi-autonomous teams...to name just a few.

Measurement and Feedback are Vital to Improvement - Click To Read Article
Joan, a coffee shop manager watched a customer get up and make his way to the pay phone beside the counter. "Hi. I am calling about the ad you had in the paper for a regional manager a few months ago," Joan overheard her customer saying on the phone. "Oh, I see, the position's been filled. Are you happy with the new manager," the man asked. "You are. OK, thanks."

Measurement Traps - Click To Read Article
Measuring employee or organizational performance can cut both ways. It can play a valuable role in improving organizations - or it can stand in the way of necessary change. Used effectively, measurement can provide vital feedback that shows whether approaches being used are moving the organization toward its goals. It can assess whether staff training, teamwork, empowerment, process improvement, re-engineering or other trendy ideas are producing real results.

Measuring Organizational and Team Energy Levels - Click To Read Article
We designed the "Energy Index" to help leaders dig deeper and uncover the root causes of why people they are trying to lead may not be mobilized and feel energized. The Index also points to areas that can be strengthened in order to further mobilize or energize a team or organization. The assessment is based on a five-point scale. 1 is extremely weak, 2 is fairly weak, 3 is moderate, 4 is fairly strong, and 5 is extremely strong.

Morale Problem? Look in the Mirror - Click To Read Article
Many Canadian organizations are experiencing deep and debilitating morale crises, just as they're trying to cope with a challenging business climate. Companies are finding that a large number of their workers, supervisors, managers and executives have quit their jobs - but they're still coming in to work every day.

More Change Demands More Leadership - Click To Read Article
Change is a fact of life. And as the pace of change accelerates, organizations are being pulled in many directions by factors such as new technologies, customer demands, e-commerce, workforce demographics, business model challenges, fierce competition, shareholder expectations, shrinking cycle times, and shifting work ethics. Now, more than ever, organizations need the bonding glue of a strong culture to hold everything and everyone together.

More is Said Than Done About Improving Customer Service - Click To Read Article
Effective teams, organizations, and leaders exist to serve others. And those who provide the highest levels of service/quality enjoy the richest rewards. That's not just some platitude or warm and fuzzy theory; it's become a well-proven fact. In Firing on All Cylinders I reviewed much of this evidence. I showed that those organizations with the highest service/quality levels have the highest levels of growth in revenue, customer satisfaction and retention, market share, productivity, safety, and employee morale while also reducing costs. So it's not surprising that the best service/quality leaders are also profitable leaders.

Moving Out of a Career Rut - Click To Read Article
Brian's head was starting to throb as he scrolled through the two dozen new voice and e-mails messages on his Blackberry while walking to his cubicle. Looks like another crazy day in the hamster cage he muttered to himself as he saw his phone message light blinking frantically. Brian, age 41, was growing increasingly frustrated. Despite working 50 hours and more per week (with an increasing amount of weekend work to "catch up") it felt like his career wasn't going anywhere. Work that once energized him now left him drained. Brian felt that unreasonable customers, managers, and co-workers were speeding up his hamster wheel just to watch him run faster. He had little time with his family and no time left to look after his health and fitness.

My Approach to Personal Time Management and Organization - Click To Read Article
Self-management, like self-improvement is highly personal. What works for one person may be ridiculous to someone else. Over the years I've evolved a personal management system that works for me. I think of it as PODS: Prioritization This is where goal setting has become the most meaningful for me - at the daily, weekly, or monthly level (I am awful at hitting any longer-term goals). Starting with a paper time management system (in a leather binder I took everywhere) and now on my notebook computer (which I don't always take everywhere), I make notes of things I want to do on a particular day, week, or month. These are recorded when I get an idea, make a commitment, or set plans.

Navigating Change and Adversity - Click To Read Article
"Embrace change" is a useless platitude mouthed by managers or motivational speakers who have not thought through its full implications - or they are masochists who enjoy suffering. Changes that bring new opportunities or propel us forward are easy to embrace. But many changes look quite negative and are tough - if not impossible - to welcome. This list might include loss of a relationship, a loved one, health, job, money, and such.

Nurturing Change Champions - Click To Read Article
When we look back at the successful team or organization changes we've been involved in, most - and certainly all major ones - were driven by "monomaniacs with a mission." Sometimes the champion, a passionate person pushing hard for a change or improvement, had a powerful organizational sponsor and someone running interference for him or her. Other times, he or she was on their own at first and built a strong change coalition or team of change champions.

Organization Structure Limits or Liberates High Performance - Click To Read Article
The CEO of a national retailer was very frustrated. His face grew noticeably redder as he told me how he had set up each store as a profit center and was attempting to hold store managers and their regional managers accountable for profitability. But when a store under performed the store manager would show that head office buyers were forcing them into stocking the wrong merchandise for their particular mix of customers. Or they would claim that the marketers hadn't put together the right campaign for their local market.

Organizational Measurement and Feedback Pathways and Pitfalls (Part One) - Click To Read Article
Far too many measures are designed to meet internal needs. They may satisfy management's command-and-control paranoia for "snoopervision" or they're designed to serve accounting information technology, human resources or other support departments. Numerous measures are also highly technical, production- or product What's often missing from these inward measurements is the customer. High performing organizations measure from the outside in along the customer-partner chain. They begin by measuring what's important to customers and pinpointing the performance gaps. Next on the measurement pecking order are the needs of those external and internal partners serving customers. Then attention turns to the people producing products or serving the servers.

Organizational Measurement and Feedback Pathways and Pitfalls (Part Two) - Click To Read Article
Get teams to develop their own measures. Make sure they're broad, balanced, and simple. Get the measurement points as close and as immediate to the activities being performed as possible. Move your team and organization to a 360-degree performance feedback system - starting with you. 360-degree feedback involves gathering data and performance perceptions from the people reporting to you, the people you serve in the customer/partner chain, your suppliers, and the manager(s) you report to. Your role in helping others on your team move to this approach, is that of a coach. You will provide your performance feedback as one of the many sources for your team and individual members.

Organizational Skill Development Pathways and Pitfalls - Click To Read Article
Despite clear evidence of the huge returns training provides, many organizations do far too little of it. Even within the training business, many companies are so wrapped up in operational pressures of maintaining today's cash flow that they neglect improvement efforts that build tomorrow's wealth. High performing organizations consistently invest from 3 - 5 percent of their payroll expenses in training. Many lesser performing companies fall well below that (1.5 percent of payroll should be the bare minimum level).

Organizational Visioning Pathways and Pitfalls - Click To Read Article
Visioning is sometimes an innate natural skill just like leadership sometimes is. And the moon sometimes blocks out the sun - but not very often. Most people have had to consciously, and with great effort, continually work to strengthen their visioning. Visionary leaders are seldom born that way. Nor are they necessarily charismatic. They have had to work at making visioning habitual.

Our Attitude More Than Our Aptitude Determines Our Altitude - Click To Read Article
Our society admires strength and power. Since the early games of the ancient Olympics, we've had contests of strength, stamina, speed, and the like. We've approached brainpower or intellectual abilities in the same way. We're in awe of intellectual giants with memory, reasoning, or complex problem solving abilities far beyond our own. IQ tests were developed to measure this intellectual strength and power. We've come to believe that highly intelligent people make the best professors, doctors, managers, scientists, and so on. Many people believe that high IQ and high levels of success and happiness go together.

Our Fate is in Our Own Hands - Click To Read Article
A few years ago a friend had Ned, a small independent contractor, do extensive renovations to his home. Being a very fussy craftsman and cabinet maker, Ned did an especially superb job on the extensive woodwork involved in the renovation. About a year after completing the renovations, Ned bumped into my friend at the local hardware store. "The recession finally caught up to me," Ned told my friend. "I've had to lay off my crew and try to wait out this slow period."

Our Values Set Our Priorities - Click To Read Article
Our values are what we value. Each of us has a hierarchy of values. This is our sense of what's most through to what's least important. Our values hierarchy is a lengthy one. It includes things like, health, family, security, wealth, cooperation, competitiveness, meaningful work, peace of mind, making a difference, friendships, innovation, status, happiness, freedom, adventure, spirituality, power, accomplishment, wisdom, love, creativity, integrity, participation, service, loyalty, pride, progress, teamwork, growth and development, helping others, physical or sensory pleasures, quality, order, control, respect, self-image, and the like.

Our Values Shape Our Character and Culture - Click To Read Article
When he spotted his grandpa asleep on the family room couch, the rambunctious ten year old saw his chance. With cat-like stealth, Jason quietly crept up on grandpa and gently smeared a small bit of smelly old cheese into his moustache. As grandpa mumbled and stirred, Jason bolted from the room. Peeking around the corner, Jason fought it hard to contain himself as he watched grandpa open his eyes and take a sniff of the air. "Whew! This room stinks", grandpa exclaimed. Rising from the couch he went into the front hall.

Passionate Leaders Rally People to the Cause - Click To Read Article
Too many people are indifferent about what they do and detached from their work. They drift through life like the bumper sticker, "I am neither for nor against apathy." Working with them, or trying to follow their lead, is about as invigorating as sitting in a cold drizzle watching your kid's team lose a baseball game.

Pathways and Pitfalls to Clarifying and Living Personal Values - Click To Read Article
Develop a comprehensive list of all possible personal values. Now rank each one as "A" (high importance), "B" (medium importance), "C" (low importance). Review your A and B values. Are there any that you feel are essentially the same value or one is an obvious subset of the other? If so, bring them together and rename it if necessary. Rank order the remaining list from highest through to lowest priority. You should now have your top five core values. Focusing on your core values: o Ask yourself whether these are your true, internal "bone deep" beliefs or an external "should" value. These are very tough questions to answer. We often don't recognize a lifetime of conditioning that has left us with other people's belief systems. Replace any "should" values with your own.

Pathways and Pitfalls to Clarifying Organizational Values - Click To Read Article
Effectively using values to care for the context and provide focus to a team or organization has two major steps: 1) clarifying and prioritizing shared values; 2) living and behaving according to those aspirations. Both can be very difficult leadership acts.

Pathways and Pitfalls to Giving Personal Recognition and Appreciation - Click To Read Article
Whether or not your team or organization develops a healthy recognition and appreciation culture depends to a large extent on the personal example you set. If you manage-by-exception or Gap-Zap people, most others will follow your lead. Energy and morale will be low. In this uncaring environment, recognition programs will be contrived and out of place. They won't work for long.

Pathways and Pitfalls to Leading Teams - Click To Read Article
The following Outstanding Teams Checklist outlines the key elements of top performing teams (and organizations). Use this to assess yourself and your team. Even better, get your team to do this assessment.

Pathways and Pitfalls to Living Organizational Values - Click To Read Article
Revisit and revise your values every few years to keep them alive and relevant. They can too easily become stale, stifling, or just ignored. In The Achieve Group's (my first training and consulting company) early years, we wrote a three page statement of Achieve's core values that were later named ACT - Attention to Service, Commitment to Quality, and Trust through Value.

Pathways and Pitfalls to Setting Organizational Goals and Priorities - Click To Read Article
Your management team must identify its three or four strategic imperatives for the next twelve months. A laundry list of urgent goals diffuses focus, spawns unproductive "busywork," and provides enough bureaucratic cover to justify any pet project or protect turf.

People Live Up or Down to a Leader's Expectations - Click To Read Article
"Tell me about the people at the organization you just left," said the senior manager who was screening candidates to fill a key leadership role. "They were uneducated and lazy," the candidate responded. "You always had to keep an eye on them because they were constantly trying to goof off or rip off the company. They were lousy communicators, resisted change, and only cared about themselves." "That's too bad," replied the senior manager, "I am sorry to say that's the same type of people you'll find here. This doesn't sound like a job you would enjoy."

Persistence Goes the Distance - Click To Read Article
In 1914 Thomas Edison's factory in West Orange, New Jersey, was virtually destroyed by fire. Although the damage exceeded $2 million, the buildings were insured for only $238,000 because they were made of concrete and were thought to be fireproof. Much of Edison's life work went up in smoke and flames that December night. At the height of the fire, Edison's 24-year-old son, Charles, searched frantically for his father. He finally found him, calmly watching the fire, his face glowing in the reflection, his white hair blowing in the wind.

Personal Education and Communication Pathways and Pitfalls - Click To Read Article
There is no one best communication style or magical speak-by-the-numbers formula that will make you a compelling verbal communicator. However, if you master the following steps, you'll become an above average communicator and leader.

Personal Feedback Pathways and Pitfalls - Click To Read Article
Ironically (and tragically) if I am a feedback-impaired manager, I am the least likely to realize it. I am not listening to what people have been trying to tell me. That's because I am too busy defending myself (or closing down feedback channels). If someone suggests I am defensive, I'll become defensive about my defensiveness.

Personal Goals and Priorities Pathways and Pitfalls (Part One) - Click To Read Article
What are you so busy doing? Are you working on high leverage activities that will catapult you, your team, and your organization toward your vision? Or are you just busy? In First Things First, Stephen Covey, Roger Merrill, and Rebecca Merrill write, "People expect us to be busy, overworked. It's become a status symbol in our society - if we're busy, we're important; if we're not busy, we're almost embarrassed to admit it. Busyness is where we get our security. It's validating, popular, and pleasing. It's also a good excuse for not dealing with the first things in our lives."

Personal Improvement Planning Pathways and Pitfalls (Part Two) - Click To Read Article
Develop or join a network of colleagues who are as interested in personal learning and development as you are. This can be a powerful source of learning from other people's experiences. It's also a great place for you to reflect on your own experiences and articulate your improvement plans. For the past few years I've run ongoing executive development sessions with groups of managers in each one. They've proven to be powerful sources of learning and personal development for all of us involved in them.

Personal Purpose Pathways and Pitfalls - Click To Read Article
Developing a personal mission statement is a discovery and learning process, not a problem to be solved. It takes a lot of time and thoughtful reflection to sort out what's most important to us. Our purpose is intertwined with our vision and values. Defining it is part of that same process.

Personal Recognition and Appreciation is an Inside Job - Click To Read Article
Like improvement efforts, effective reward and recognition is an integrated process, not a bolt-on program. Since you can't make your team or organization into something different than you, it has to start with you. Whose needs are your recognition and reward systems designed to serve? What are the goals? Are they to manipulate, control, and "motivate?" Or do they build an atmosphere of helpfulness, appreciation, and high energy? How do you know? As with beauty, quality, or customer service, reward and recognition are in the eyes of the beholder.

Personal Visioning Pathways and Pitfalls - Click To Read Article
My wife, Heather, and I have found that spending at least once a year in a quiet evening of uninterrupted time "daydreaming" has kept our marriage strong and our lives in focus. We look at family, house or home, our careers, our physical health, our financial health, community involvement, spiritual growth, and social life.

Pinpointing My Leadership Position - Click To Read Article
In 1707, Great Britain lost four warships and 2,000 sailors on the rocks of the Scilly Islands, located off the southwest coast of England. It wasn't that the location of the rocks was unknown; indeed, the maps of the area were clear and accurate. The problem was the ships' location. On that dark and foggy night, Admiral Clowdisley Shovell and his navigators tragically miscalculated exactly where they were.

Process Management Improves the Horizontal Flow - Click To Read Article
A group of sailors were out in an old boat. The boat hit a rock and sprung a slow leak. The group began to fight over whose fault it was that they hit the rock. Then they argued over whose responsibility it was to fix the hole. Those on the starboard side shouted that those on the port side, where the hole was, should be responsible for fixing it. All the while, the boat filled with water and floundered in the increasing heavy seas. As the shouting and finger pointing grew, a large wave swamped the boat. Everyone drowned at sea.

Process Management Pathways and Pitfalls (Part One) - Click To Read Article
A group of sailors were out in an old boat. The boat hit a rock and sprung a slow leak. The group began to fight over whose fault it was that they hit the rock. Then they argued over whose responsibility it was to fix the hole. Those on the starboard side shouted that those on the port side, where the hole was, should be responsible for fixing it. All the while, the boat filled with water and floundered in the increasing heavy seas. As the shouting and finger pointing grew, a large wave swamped the boat. Everyone drowned at sea.

Process Management Pathways and Pitfalls (Part Two) - Click To Read Article
Make sure all your process improvement activities are clearly and tightly linked to your strategic imperatives. Each effort should also have highly focused and specific improvement goals (that are an aggressive, major stretch) and measurements. Establish feedback and follow-up steps for each process management and improvement team.

Profits are a Reward, Not a Purpose - Click To Read Article
Why do you get out of bed in the morning? Why do you go to work? What do you want to be remembered for when you're gone? Why do you exist? What about your team or organization? Why does it exist? What's its value-add? What's its function? How do you want to be positioned in the market and minds of your customers? What business are you in?

Purpose Gives Us a Deep Sense of Meaning - Click To Read Article
Why do I get out of bed in the morning? Why do I go to work? What do I want to be remembered for when I am gone? Why do I exist? What about our team or organization? Why does it exist? What's its value-add? What's its function? How do we want to be positioned in the market and minds of our customers? What business are we in?

Purposeful Leaders Make Meaning - Click To Read Article
In our organization and team development consulting at The CLEMMER Group, we often bring groups of people together to get their perspectives on strengths and weaknesses, improvement opportunities, and the like. One morning, I asked a group of very quiet production and service people a series of these questions. I was getting very few responses. This was going nowhere fast. Finally, one grizzled veteran sitting at the back of the room with his arms folded said, "Jim, I think you're confusing us with people who care."

Recognition and Appreciation Inspires and Energizes - Click To Read Article
One manager proudly used this term to describe his approach. "If you haven't heard from me, that's a good sign," he explained. "That means I think you're doing just fine. I only deal with the exceptions. I look for problems and people that need correcting. Those are what I jump on." In a later conversation that same manager talked about his failed first marriage. "What really drove me crazy were her constant complaints that I never told her I loved her," he complained. "I married her didn't I? Obviously I loved her.

Recognition Do's and Don'ts to Inspire and Energize - Click To Read Article
Like improvement efforts, effective reward and recognition is an integrated process, not a bolt-on program. Since you can't make your team or organization into something different than you, it has to start with you. Whose needs are your recognition and reward systems designed to serve? What are the goals? Are they to manipulate, control, and "motivate?" Or do they build an atmosphere of helpfulness, appreciation, and high energy? How do you know? As with beauty, quality, or customer service, reward and recognition are in the eyes of the beholder.

Leaders are Learned Optimists - Click To Read Article
Effective leaders are "unreasonable" optimists. Optimists refuse to live in "the real world." They live in a world of hope and possibilities. They see an opportunity in every calamity. The pessimist sees a calamity in every opportunity. Optimists excite and arouse others to action by helping them see, believe in, and reach for what could be.

Leaders are Made, not Born - Click To Read Article
Imagine picking up your newspaper and finding these announcements in the "Births" section: BIRTHS Mr. and Mrs. Blue Collar proudly announce the birth of Jack, a construction foreman. At 13 lbs., 12 oz., he arrived with a bellowing cry and tattoos, and whistling rudely at the nurses. Wilma and Sam Klutz are sad to announce the arrival of an underachiever. Mia Klutz came complete with slumped shoulders, listless eyes and a whiny cry. Birth was by caesarian section.

Leaders Care for Organization Culture and Context - Click To Read Article
In many organizations (especially those with morale or motivation problems), management has created a sterile and passionless culture. Their strategies, budgets, and business plans are cold and lifeless. So teams and frontline performers go through the motions, put in their time, and go home. Technomanagers try to energize their people by using "leader speak" and imitating some of the things leaders do and say. They develop statements of vision, mission, values, "strategic purpose," and the like. However, improvement programs such as reengineering, service/quality, empowerment, teams, or new technology have no spirit. These programs may build up some speed and even get off the ground. But they never soar.

Leaders Control Their Own Destiny - Click To Read Article
Carl Hiebert tells uplifting stories with his lips (as a professional speaker), but the story he tells with his life is even more inspiring. Carl first made a name for himself (and aviation history) in Canada when he overcame huge odds to organize (that took years) and fly a successful 58-day flight from the Atlantic Ocean in Halifax to the Pacific Ocean in Vancouver - in an open cockpit ultralight. Everyone in our family have since been up with Carl in his two-seater ("flying lawn chairs") aircraft powered by a small 47-horsepower engine.

Leaders Focus on Reflection and Renewal - Click To Read Article
Very often we find that managers and their teams are so busy working in the business that they have little time to work on the business. Meetings, deadlines, full email in-boxes, phone calls - comprised mostly of operational activities - suck up huge amounts of time and energy. We've often tried to work with such ineffective managers to set up training workshops and off-site planning retreats. But they are typically too busy fighting fires to spend time on any prevention strategies. As they work ever harder, the fires burn ever bigger. Too often this leads to burned-out managers, demoralized frontline staff, and slipping performance.

Leaders Go First - Click To Read Article
The CLEMMER Group did an extensive assessment with a divisional manager to diagnose the strengths and weaknesses within his division and implement a major change and improvement process. Our assessment report showed that the problems in the division's customer service, quality, and productivity could be traced to one cause - the management team was dysfunctional. They were technicians and managers, not leaders. Their individual and collective leadership was weak. After reviewing the report with the division manager, we planned an off-site retreat with the management team to review the report and establish action plans.

Leaders Handle Performance Problems - Click To Read Article
A water bearer in India had two pots attached to each end of a pole. He would sling the pole over his shoulders to carry water from the stream to his house every day. One of the pots was cracked and leaked water. The other one was perfect. One day the cracked pot spoke to the water bearer about its shame and apologized for dripping water while the other pot never lost a drop. The water bearer replied to the pot, "Yes, you are cracked and do not carry water as well your brother pot. But you have an ability that he does not have.

Leaders Have Great Expectations - Click To Read Article
An old adage asks, "How am I expected to soar with the eagles when I'm surrounded by a bunch of turkeys?" This is a common victim statement, often heard from underperforming managers. Leaders see people as they could be - as eagles in training. Managers simply see them as turkeys. Research shows that both get what they expect.

Leaders Help People to Help Themselves - Click To Read Article
Remember the old television series, The Lone Ranger? A lot of traditional managers see themselves in a similarly heroic role. In the TV show, when the poor hapless townsfolk got themselves into big trouble, the Lone Ranger and his faithful sidekick would come riding over the hill. With the right degree of courage, wit, and cunning, he faced down the mean hombre or otherwise took care of the problem for the town. At the end of the nice, neat, half hour episode, our hero would leave the grateful townsfolk behind wondering, "Who was that masked man?"

Leaders Inspire by Example - Click To Read Article
It's when times are toughest that everyone most clearly sees authentic leadership. This is when much-repeated claims like "our people are our most important assets" ("leaderspeak") are proven true, or just so much hollow rhetoric. How managers handle economic downturns and sudden cost-reduction pressures, for example, speaks volumes about their leadership - or lack thereof. If an organization has strong leaders who truly care about people and want to build long-term trust, layoffs are always the very last, desperate step. Such leaders operate from core values of partnership and participation. They don't look at people within the organization as "heads," "FTEs (Full Time Equivalents)," "warm bodies," or faceless "human resources" to be acquired and disposed of like assets on a balance sheet.

Leaders Inspire Their Teams With Optimism - Click To Read Article
Seligman has found that pessimists fall into the trap of the three Ps when faced with negative change or setback. They make the issue Permanent, Pervasive and Personal. They avoid wearing clean underwear because it will only tempt car accidents. When faced with difficult change or problems, we have three choices. We can be a Survivor and just hang in there, hoping for the best, sitting on the fence, and waiting to see what happens. Or we can choose to be a Victim, using the situation as one more example of how these terrible things keep happening to us.

Leaders Invest in Growing and Developing People - Click To Read Article
Successful leaders understand the difference between things and people in an organization. They know that it's important to manage things, but that it's even more important to lead people. Leaders don't just mouth empty phrases like "people are our greatest resource"; they demonstrate by their actions that people - not strategy, products, plans, processes, or systems - are the most critical factor in an organization's performance. That's why leaders invest heavily in growing and developing people, while managers see people as objects to be commanded and controlled.

Leaders Make it Happen - Click To Read Article
After heated meetings and many warnings to clean up the community group's problems, the director was finally fired. While cleaning out his office, he met his eager new successor. "There are three sealed and numbered letters in the top drawer of this desk," he told the new director. "I left them there as my parting advice to you. Open them in order when you're really in trouble."

Leaders Make the Difference - Click To Read Article
All organizations have access to more-or-less the same resources. They draw from the same pool of people in their markets or geographic areas. And they can all learn about the latest tools and techniques. Yet not all organizations perform equally. In fact, there is a huge gap between high-and low-performing organizations. What accounts for this? Quite simply, it's people. As the venerable Peter Drucker points out, "Of all the decisions a manager makes, none are as important as the decisions about people because they determine the performance capacity of the organization."

Leaders Put Good Intentions into Action - Click To Read Article
A recurring nightmare haunted Peter to re-examine and change the aimless and drifting course of his life. In his bad dream he was standing before a severe judge and disapproving jury. "You are charged with wasting your life," the judge bellowed harshly down to Peter standing before the high bench. "How do you plead?" Restraining himself from fleeing the courtroom, Peter was finally forced to whisper, "Guilty." He appeared ready to say more, then stood lost in thought.

Leaders Take Responsibility for Their Choices - Click To Read Article
When our son Chris was four years old he desperately wanted to graduate from his Big Wheel tricycle to a real two-wheeled bike. He started with training wheels on the bike but soon wanted them removed and didn't want me holding the bike for him. The result was that each time he tried to ride the bike, he'd fall after going just a short distance. After his sixth failed attempt, his frustration got the better of him: He grabbed the bike off the ground and bit the front tire as hard as he could. Clearly, it was all the bike's fault!

Leadership and Learning are Indispensable - Click To Read Article
The great American founding father, author, and statesman, Benjamin Franklin, was highly devoted to life long learning and continual personal improvement. His book, The Art of Virtue (edited by George Rogers), is an inspiring account of Franklin's life and an instructive guide to his improvement process and personal effective system. Franklin once said, "If you empty your purse in your head, no one can take it away from you. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest."

Innovation Champions, Skunkworks, and Organization Learning - Click To Read Article
Advertising executive, Charles Brower once said, "A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a quip and worried to death by a frown on the right person's brow." When innovations are in the exploration stage, they need a champion to take them through the rest of the developmental stages.

Innovation Means Looking Beyond What is to What Could Be - Click To Read Article
Customer and market research, competitive benchmarking, and focusing on market share could be detrimental to your organization's future performance. These approaches are critical improvement tools. Top performing organizations have turned them into a disciplined and useful science. But they can also lead to "me-too" followership or -- even worse -- commodity products and services that compete only on price.

Innovation Needs a Culture of Trust and Openness - Click To Read Article
The environment of most organizations is too poisonous for innovation and organizational learning to flourish. A mistake is generally a CLM - career-limiting move. Making a mistake in front of many managers is like cutting yourself in front of Dracula. So people become defensive. They cover up problems, set backs, and missed goals.

Innovation Through Accidents and "Controlled Chaos" - Click To Read Article
Mark Twain, once said, "name the greatest of all inventors. Accident." He was right. Most innovations and breakthroughs come from mistakes, serendipity, false starts, set backs, and misapplications. Many innovations were unplanned and unexpected.

Inspiring and Energizing with Strong Verbal Communications - Click To Read Article
We can't inspire and energize people with memos, mission statements, data and analysis, charts, goals and objectives, measurements, systems, or processes. These are important factors in improving performance. But that's management, not leadership.

Interested in Leadership, or Committed to Becoming a Leader? - Click To Read Article
Many managers in leadership roles have stunted personal growth. Their "years of leadership experience and learning" is formal education (usually technical and/or management) followed by a year or two of experience multiplied twenty or thirty times. Here's an all too typical dinner conversation I had with a senior manager in the middle of a two-day improvement workshop I was running with a senior management team. The company was in crisis. It was struggling just to stay even in its industry.

Just a Job or a Source of Deeper Joy and Meaning? - Click To Read Article
If we're going to be an effective energy leader, then our work can't be work. We need a job that isn't a job, it's a joy. When I love what I'm doing, I never have to go to work again. If I didn't love the personal and organization improvement field, I wouldn't study, note, and file hundreds of books and magazines each year. I wouldn't produce the dozens of columns and articles I've written.

Just a Job or Part of Our Deeper Purpose? - Click To Read Article
The owner of a car wash and gas bar was at a conference where he bumped into an old employee. "Hi George. I enjoyed your presentation. You had some great ideas and insights for the group." "Thanks Charlie. It's great to see you again. It's sure been a long time." Is this little Joey?" "Yep. Joe's grown a bit since you last saw him. He's going to be taking over for me next year. If there's any business left for him to run." "Great."

Just Go and Do It - Click To Read Article
Don't wait – initiate! That's the deeply embedded belief system of strong leaders. An ancient Chinese proverb teaches that "the person for waits for a roast duck to fly into their mouth must wait a very long time. Regardless of their position or role, leaders don't wait for something to happen or someone to tell them what to do. They go and do it.

Keep it Simple - Click To Read Article
A department manager in a struggling company recently summed up what's wrong with many organizations. Contemplating his firm's abysmal performance, he told me: "We have lots of projects, goals and priorities. We're constantly making lists and setting action plans. But we seldom see anything through to completion before some urgent new priority is pushed at us."

Keys to Personal, Team, and Organizational Transformation - Click To Read Article
Daniel Boone once said, "I can't say I was ever lost, but I was bewildered once for three days." Many team and organization transformation and improvement efforts are lost or badly bewildered. Besides riding in smelly cabs, eating rubber chicken (or guessing the day's mystery meat), and racing through crowded airports to catch a flight, another benefit of my consulting work are the opportunities I've had to work with hundreds of leadership teams trying to improve themselves and their organizations.

How To Make Effort Rewarding - Click To Read Article
Rewarding and recognizing employees is a ticklish business. It can motivate people to explore more effective ways to do their jobs - or it can utterly discourage such efforts.

How Total is Your Quality Management? - Click To Read Article
Many well intentioned "Total Quality Management" improvement efforts aren't working. In their international study of Total Quality Management practices, the Conference Board of Canada found one study which showed that "seven out of ten North American companies fail in their attempt to execute a total quality strategy".

How Visioning Changed My Life - Click To Read Article
Visioning is where my personal effectiveness quest began. In 1974, when I was just starting my straight commission Culligan sales job, someone recommended I read Claude Bristol's book TNT: The Power Within You. The book sparked such an intensity of energy, excitement, and profound new awareness that I couldn't get a good night's sleep for almost a week. Even now, as I thumb through the book and recall that turning point in my life, a shiver runs up my spine.

How Visioning Helped My Passion and Persistence - Click To Read Article
Visioning creates passion. The clearer and more compelling the vision, the stronger the passion. And the more likely we are to hang in there during the inevitable downs and defeats as we reach for our dreams.

Hypocrisy and Egotism: Me-Deep in Fooling Myself - Click To Read Article
An entrepreneur decided it was time to give his daughter, a recent business-school graduate, a lesson "in the real world." "In business, ethics are very important," he began. "Say, for instance, that a client comes in and settles his hundred-dollar account in cash. After he leaves, you notice a second hundred-dollar bill stuck to the first one.

Improvement Planning for Taking Charge of Change - Click To Read Article
Effective learning and capability development doesn't happen just because we want it to. For example, empowering without enabling isn't just foolish it's unethical. It's like putting a complete novice at the controls of a clunky old airplane and "empowering" him or her to land in the middle of a ferocious thunderstorm.

Improvement Planning Infrastructure and Process - Click To Read Article
The high performing "born leader" is a dangerous myth. Few highly effective teams just fall into place on their own because the right people were thrown together. High performing organizations don't automatically emerge because somebody wanted them to, had a brilliant idea, or saw a great market opportunity.

Improvement Planning Pathways and Pitfalls - Part One - Click To Read Article
You can't encourage and support what you don't know is happening. The most interesting and useful local change and improvement initiatives rarely make it into reports or formal channels. That may be because they're "illegally" breaking corporate rules, deviating from the standard process, or failing to follow the official plan. It may be because local champions or teams (skunk works) don't realize the significance of their innovation to the rest of the organization or a potential new market.

Improvement Planning Pathways and Pitfalls (Part Two) - Click To Read Article
Celebrate, publicize, recognize, honor, thank, applaud, and otherwise encourage champions and local teams who take initiative to change and improve their part of the world.

Innovation and Learning Through Successful Failures - Click To Read Article
One of the more dangerous myths about entrepreneurship is that we have to be a risk taker to be successful. Speculators, traders, and deal making entrepreneurs might thrive on the risks and rush of "doing deals." But entrepreneurs building long-term businesses aren't risky gamblers. Successful entrepreneurs and innovation leaders are obsessed with developing new products, services, management systems, human resource approaches, markets, and businesses that will give them a big competitive edge.

Innovation and Organizational Learning Pathways and Pitfalls: Part One of Three - Click To Read Article
Make sure the "voice of the market" pervades every part of your organization. Bring customers into your company offices and plants for visits, joint problem solving and planning sessions, celebrations, focus groups, conferences, barbecues, presentations, and the like. Get everyone in your organization out to see customers or into the real world on a regular basis.

Innovation and Organizational Learning Pathways and Pitfalls: Part Two of Three - Click To Read Article
If your team or organization doesn't have a disciplined management system and supportive leadership culture, innovation and organizational learning is just wishful thinking.

Innovation and Organizational Learning Pathways and Pitfalls: Part 3 of 3 - Click To Read Article
Make sure that you and people throughout your organization spend lots of time in external benchmarking and "corporate tourism" mode, looking for good ideas to swipe. Many of the opportunities or problems you're facing now are old hat to somebody somewhere. Learning from other people's experiences - both the successes and the failures - can take years and millions of dollars off your learning curve.

Innovation and the Law of Averages - Click To Read Article
Early in my sales career I was introduced to the Law of Averages. It's been a key concept of direct sales for many decades. The Law of Averages basically teaches salespeople that if you want to double or triple your sales, you need to double or triple the cold calls and sales presentations you make. I found that if I made ten cold calls to interest people in home water treatment equipment, I generally got one appointment for a sales presentation. Three appointments usually gave me one sale.

Innovation Calls For Leadership - Click To Read Article
"Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail." Success is one of the leading causes of failure. Market and customer research is a leading cause of tunnel vision. • When trains were first developed, the King of Prussia confidently predicted,"No one will pay good money to get from Berlin to Potsdam in one hour when he can ride his horse there in one day for free".

Choosing Our Poison or Choosing to Let Go - Click To Read Article
I am running late for an important appointment and speeding down a two-lane highway. Suddenly I come up behind a garbage truck lumbering along well below the speed limit. The highway is full of oncoming traffic, curves, and hills so I can't pass. If I start to get angry, pound the steering wheel, and really work myself into lather about this, who is in control of my emotions at this point - a garbage truck or me?

Choosing Our Reality - Click To Read Article
An optimist expects the best possible outcome and dwells on the most hopeful aspects of a situation. He or she believes that this is the best of all possible worlds, the universe is improving, and good will ultimately triumph over evil. An optimist believes no one ever ruined their eye sight by looking at the bright side of life. Research on Emotional Intelligence, Attribution Theory (see Martin Seligman's book outstanding book Learned Optimism), and related fields show that optimists not only go further in life, they also have a much better time on the trip. Optimists are generally healthier, happier, and leaders in their fields.

Clarifying Our Core Values - Click To Read Article
A key element of "knowing thyself" is sorting out what's really important to you. Without a clear sense of our personal principles and priorities, it's almost impossible to bring the picture of our preferred future or vision sharply into focus. Investing time and effort to uncover and articulate our personal principles has many important benefits.

Clarifying Personal Purpose - Click To Read Article
Thinking about death can produce a passion for life. Early in my career, I was introduced to the idea of clarifying my life's purpose through contemplating my death by Charlie Jones, a personal effectiveness and leadership development author and speaker. In his book, Life is Tremendous, he wrote, "You're not ready to live your life until you know what you want written on your tombstone". That's a powerful thought! It forces you to boil away all your goals, plans, and activities to get at the core reason you exist.

Control Your Own Destiny - Click To Read Article
Twenty years ago I came across a story (I don't know who wrote it) that illustrates the deadly power of the Victimitis Virus (the poor-little-helpless-me syndrome). Whenever I catch myself pointing "out there" to explain my poor performance, I pull out this story and read it again. I have since used it with many groups to make the same point.

Creating High Energy Environments - Click To Read Article
Imagine rushing to an emergency room with severe stomach cramps. Without any examination, no knowledge of your medical history, or asking any questions about your symptoms, the doctor who has never seen you before says "I know exactly what's wrong" and prescribes a powerful medication. Such treatment without diagnosis would be considered malpractice in medicine. The same is true in looking for ways to mobilize and energize others.

Customer Intimacy and Empathy are Keys to Innovation - Click To Read Article
Just because a company is spending money on research (such as markets, customers, or new technologies) and development doesn't mean they will get innovation. Innovation, as with advertising, training, or many other organization investments, depends on the quality of the investment as much as the quantity of resources put in it. A high proportion of innovative new products, services, and companies flop.

Customer Satisfaction is a Reflection of Employee Satisfaction - Click To Read Article
For most organizations, the goal of improving customer service levels is an article of faith. And so it should be, because there's an overwhelming body of research to show that building customer loyalty has a major impact on profitability. In fact, according to one study – based on 46,000 business-to-business surveys – a "totally satisfied" customer contributes 2.6 times as much revenue as a "somewhat satisfied" customer.

Decentralized Organization Structures Empower and Energize - Click To Read Article
The evidence is clear and overwhelming. Centralized, hierarchical organizations work about as well as the old Soviet Union. Despite all the evidence, we keep smacking into many variations on the centralization themes. What makes things even worse is how senior managers in these dysfunctional organizations proclaim empowerment, participation, teams, leadership, trust, and the like.

Deepening Our Discipline - Click To Read Article
During the 1960s, psychologist Walter Mischel conducted "the marshmallow test" with four-year-olds in the preschool at Stanford University to assess each preschooler's ability to delay gratification. Each four-year-old was given one marshmallow. They were told that they could eat it immediately or, if they waited until the researcher returned in twenty minutes, they could have two marshmallows.

Developing a Team or Organization Vision - Click To Read Article
As Mark Twain once remarked about the weather, there's a lot of talk about vision, but very few managers really do anything about it. Visioning is sometimes an innate natural skill just like leadership sometimes is. And the moon sometimes blocks out the sun - but none occur very often. Most people have had to consciously and with great effort continually work to strengthen their visioning.

Discipline Can Be Habit Forming - Click To Read Article
Good and bad habits are tiny daily choices that accumulate. Each choice is a small wire that is woven together with hundreds of other little choices. Eventually these wires form a strong cable. Like a child that grows a tiny amount each day, our tiny choices accumulate without much notice. By the time we realize we have either a good or a bad habit, the habit has us.

'Do As I Say, Not As I Do' Doesn't Cut It Any More - Click To Read Article
More and more, I hear managers express frustration over the behavior of the people they lead. They complain about their failure to take initiative and responsibility, grumble about lateness to meetings or lousy teamwork. But it's so much easier to point fingers elsewhere. For when it comes to their own behavior, many of those same managers aren't acting any differently than the people they complain about. Too few managers model what they demand from others. If you're a manager, ask yourself: How often do I seem to be saying one thing while doing another? How often am I practising what I preach? Managers who want to stop giving out mixed signals need to hold up the leadership mirror and make sure they are satisfied with what they see being reflected back.

Don't Promise Too Much - Click To Read Article
I've recently bought a computer system, taken my family to a theme park and flown on an airline that were all rated tops in their fields for service. They had won awards and were widely cited as leading examples of service quality in action.

Don't Wait to See the Blood - Click To Read Article
At my youngest daughter's sixth birthday party, a five-year-old boy hit her on the head. Asked to apologize, he politely refused: "Mr. Clemmer, I don't apologize unless I see teeth marks or blood." Many managers don't realize the problems they're creating unless they see the teeth marks or blood on those with whom they work. The most insensitive managers are those who lack good feedback systems and refuse to seek input on how to improve their own performance.

Education and Communication Build Commitment - Click To Read Article
Shortly after Vanessa, our second daughter was born, my wife Heather was talking with six year old Chris, our only son, about how much she liked having a boy in the family. "If you like little boys so much, how come you brought home another girl?" Chris tearfully rebutted. Chris and his sister Jenn had been hoping for a younger sibling of their own sex. When Vanessa was born, Chris felt like he'd lost. He didn't understand the process. He assumed his Mom and Dad chose the sex of their kids.

Education and Communications Pathways and Pitfalls - Click To Read Article
"Communications help to keep people feeling included in and connected to the organization...give people information, and do it again and again." - William Bridges, Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change You need to establish the few core messages you want to communicate throughout your organization. Use any and every communication channel you can to review, remind, and reinforce them.

Emotional Empowerment Builds Commitment - Click To Read Article
What gets people really excited about their jobs? What inspires the passion and commitment that translates into exceptional performance? It isn't a process of management controls. It's a leadership function that instills in people an emotional stake in what they do. As Daniel Goleman and his co-authors report in Primal Leadership: Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence, "Great leaders move us. They ignite our passion and inspire the best in us. When we try to explain why they are so effective, we speak of strategy, vision, or powerful ideas. But the reality is much more primal: Great leadership works through the emotions."

Empowerment Through Passion and Commitment - Click To Read Article
The leadership vacuum found in many organizations often shows up in how managers try to buy passion and commitment. They push rather than pull. They manage rather than lead. This saps passion and reduces the "commitment culture" so vital to high performance. The Gallup organization found that only 29% of U.S. employees are engaged in their work.

Engagement is an Inside Job - Click To Read Article
When faced with major organizational problems, managers often hire consultants to help provide a solution. The consultant will usually interview people, run focus groups, and gather input from a variety of sources. Many good ideas are sifted through and the most relevant one presented to management along with the consultant's recommended action plan.

Exception is a Poor Rule - Click To Read Article
I once met an executive who proudly described his approach to recognizing employees' work as "management by exception." "If you haven't heard from me, that's a good sign," he explained. "That means I think you're doing just fine. I only deal with the exceptions. I look for problems and people that need correcting. Those are what I jump on."

Exploring Inner Space - Click To Read Article
An ass found a lion's skin, and dressed himself up in it. Then he went about frightening every one he met, for they all took him to be a lion, men and beasts alike, and took to their heels when they saw him coming. Elated by the success of his trick, he loudly brayed in triumph. The fox heard him, and recognized him at once for the ass he was, and said to him, "Oho, my friend, it's you, is it? I, too, should have been afraid if I hadn't hear your voice."

Feedback to See How Others See Me - Click To Read Article
An elderly gentleman went to the doctor and with a complaint about a gas problem. "But," he told the doctor, "it really doesn't bother me too much. When I pass gas they never smell and are always silent. As a matter of fact, I've passed gas at least 10 times since I've been here in your office. You didn't know I was doing it because they don't smell and are silent."

Focus and Context: The Hub of Leadership - Click To Read Article
It wasn't by accident that we chose to arrange the timeless leadership principles in the shape of a wheel. Of all the principles, there is one that is central, one from which the others emanate, much as spokes radiate from the hub of a wheel.

Forward Looking Leaders Know When to Step Back - Click To Read Article
Poor managers are like vampires. You hold up a mirror and they see nothing. At our youngest daughter's sixth birthday party, a five-year-old boy hit Vanessa on the head. Asked to apologize, he politely refused: "Mr. Clemmer, I don't apologize unless I see teeth marks or blood." Many managers don't realize the problems they're creating unless they see the teeth marks or blood on those with whom they work. The most insensitive managers are those who lack good feedback systems and refuse to seek input on how to improve their own performance.

From Phase of Life to Way of Life - Click To Read Article
Marti was driving through her neighborhood to work one morning when a genie suddenly appeared in the passenger seat and asked, "And what will your third wish be?" Marti was so startled, she almost hit a lamp post. After pulling over to the curb and stopping the car, Marti glared angrily at the genie and practically shouted, "How can I be getting a third wish when I haven't had a first or second wish yet?"

Goal Setting Can Limit Our Flexibility and Learning - Click To Read Article
Goals are precise and measurable objectives with exact time frames and targets. Goals are short-term steps toward our long-term vision. Goals are specific points along our journey to higher performance. They could be organization or team improvement objectives such as targets for cycle time, customer satisfaction, error or defect rates, new products or services, costs, or revenues.

Good Feedback Benefits Both Giver and Receiver - Click To Read Article
Effective leaders are effective communicators. And part of this skill is the ability to deliver useful feedback. Good feedback benefits both the giver and receiver. It nourishes growth and development.

Growing at the Speed of Change - Click To Read Article
Change happens. We can't control much of the world changing around us. But we can control how we respond. We can choose to anticipate and embrace changes or resist them. Resisting change is usually like trying to push water upstream.

Growing Others into What They Could Be - Click To Read Article
I was doing fairly well in grades one to three - especially in reading. Then I hit a terrible teacher in grade four. She made school so unhappy and unappealing, she almost caused me to drop out - of course I would have waited another few years to make it official. However, in grades five and six I came under the nurturing of Mrs. Westman. I vividly remember her saying after I'd read a composition to the class; "someday I won't be surprised to see your name on a book."

Growing the Leader in Us - Click To Read Article
Leadership is a verb, not a noun. Leadership is action, not a position. Leadership is defined by what we do, not the role we are in. Some people in "leadership roles" are excellent leaders. But too many are bosses, "snoopervisors," technocrats, bureaucrats, managers, commanders, chiefs, and the like.

Growing with Change - Click To Read Article
Change happens. And while we can't control much of the world changing around us, we can control how we respond. We can choose to anticipate and embrace changes or resist them. Resisting change is like trying to push water upstream. Generally we're quick to point to others who resist change. It's much harder to recognize or admit to our own change resistance.

High Performance Organization Structures and Characteristics - Click To Read Article
The search for an ideal or perfect structure is about as futile as trying to find the ideal canned improvement process to drop on the organization (or ourselves). It depends on the organization's Context and Focus (vision, values, and purpose), goals and priorities, skill and experience levels, culture, teams' effectiveness and so on. Each is unique to any organization.

Honesty and Integrity Build a Foundation of Trust - Click To Read Article
Seven-year-old first baseman, Tanner Munsey, fielded a ground ball and tried to tag a runner going from first to second base. The umpire, Laura Benson, called the runner out, but young Tanner immediately ran to her side and said, "Ma'am, I didn't tag the runner." Umpire Benson reversed herself, sent the runner to second base, and Tanner's coach gave him the game ball for his honesty.

Honesty and Integrity Produce Trust - Click To Read Article
Honesty and integrity are motherhood leadership phrases. And they should be. They are fundamental to leadership. Honesty and integrity produce trust, which produces high levels of confidence. High confidence encourages people to dream and to reach for new horizons.

How I Express My Personal Purpose - Click To Read Article
Thinking about death can produce a passion for life. Early in my career Charlie Jones, a personal effectiveness and leadership development author and speaker introduced me to the idea of clarifying my life's purpose through contemplating my death. In his book, Life is Tremendous he wrote, "you're not ready to live your life until you know what you want written on your tombstone".

How Many Companies Lose That Loving Feeling - Click To Read Article
Many successful companies were started by passionate zealots with a strong technical expertise matched only by their powerful vision and intense drive to succeed. This energy and excitement attracted like-minded people (team members, customers, partners, investors, etc) and fuelled their early growth.

Communication Strategies, Systems, and Skills - Click To Read Article
Communication is both a symptom and a cause of organization performance problems. Over the years, we've heard hundreds of managers use communication as a vague catchall for every type of organization and team problem imaginable. Generally, the root cause of many "communication problems" was deeper than that. Poorly designed organizations, ineffective processes, bureaucratic systems, unaligned rewards, unclear customer/partner focus, fuzzy visions, values, and purpose, unskilled team leaders and members, cluttered goals and priorities, low trust levels, and weak measurements and feedback loops all cause communication problems. Whenever a manager contacts us to solve a "communication problem," we always know we have some digging to do.

Assessing Our Ability to Influence Others - Click To Read Article
In our personal and leadership development workshops we often conduct a 'degrees of control' exercise. We ask participants to come up with examples in the following areas: 1. Direct Control; 2. Influence; and 3. No Control. While there's often lots of debate and not always full agreement, examples under No Control generally include things like the weather, the economy, natural disasters, freak accidents, and the like. Discussions about my degree of Direct Control usually boil down to just one thing - me. However, some autocratic people fool themselves into thinking they have direct control over their teams, kids, or people reporting to them. Many other people are quick to surrender to the Victimitis Virus and declare they have no control or even influence over the behavior of anyone else.

Being All That We Can See - Click To Read Article
There is no objective reality. We don't see the world as it is, we see the world as we are. Sean was filling out a university questionnaire to help determine roommate compatibility. Beside the questions, "Do you make your bed every day?" and "Do you consider yourself a neat person?" he checked "Yes." Later his mother reviewed the questionnaire. Knowing those answers were far from the truth, she asked Sean why he'd lied. "What do you expect me to do," he retorted. "I don't want to get stuck living with some slob!"

Being True to Me - Click To Read Article
"Finding my voice" is a phrase often used by artists, writers, musicians, and other creative people to describe the often difficult process of learning from other artists' styles and, from these, developing the style that most truly represents yourself. This applies not just to artists, but to people in just about any walk of life. Each of us learns from what surrounds us - for example, the expectations and value systems of parents, society, institutions, friends, peers, our boss, or our organization. But then we have to ask ourselves whether these things really reflect our own personal values. And if they don't, we need to move beyond them to find what does. This takes a lot of work - and even more courage.

Beyond "Near-Life Experiences" - Click To Read Article
We will all eventually die. The real tragedy is failing to fully live. Too many people are having "near-life experiences." • "How many people work for your company?" "Oh, about half." • "I think you're confusing me with someone who cares." • "The most dangerous place in this organization is at the exit door around quitting time. You'll get trampled." • "Working is like a nightmare. I'd like to get out of it, but I need the sleep." • "I used up all my sick days, so I phoned in dead." • "I've developed a new philosophy, I only dread one day at a time." • "I feel better now that I've given up all hope."

Beyond Manipulating and Motivating to Leading and Inspiring - Click To Read Article
We've known for decades that money doesn't motivate most people to higher levels of performance. In his seminal 1959 book, The Motivation to Work, Frederick Herzberg identified money as a "hygiene factor." If we feel we're not fairly compensated, lack of money can de-motivate. But once we feel we're treated fairly, the promise of more money doesn't sustain higher energy and mobilize inspired performance.

Blame Management for Poor Service - Click To Read Article
Buried in the publicity of a nasty airline strike was a vivid example of how misdirected management's service improvement efforts can become. To improve service, the airline ordered all attendants to attend three hour "Commitment to Courtesy" classes without pay. "They told us the reason we were losing money was because we were rude to passengers," said one attendant.

Blazing Our Own Improvement Path - Click To Read Article
A timeless principle of inside out leadership is continuous personal growth. When U.S. Supreme Court associate justice, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., was hospitalized at the age of 92, President Roosevelt went to visit him. He found Holmes reading a Greek Primer. "Why are you reading that?" the president asked. The great jurist replied, "Why, Mr. President, to improve my mind."

Blazing Our Own Unique Leadership Path - Click To Read Article
There are about as many views and definitions of what encompasses "leadership" as there are experts in this field. There is one point that most leadership researchers and developers agree on; leaders are made not born. Leaders are rarely naturals. Certainly some are innately better at some aspects of leadership than others. For example, they may be more verbal or naturally "people-oriented" than their technical or administratively inclined management counterparts. But most highly effectively leaders have invested countless hours and long years in numerous forms of self-development.

Blocks to Customer Focus - Click To Read Article
Despite all the proclamations, catchy advertising slogans, and customer service publicity, service levels have improved only marginally in the last few years. As Harvard Business School professor, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, puts it "Despite the recent media coronation of King Customer, many customers will remain commoners... most businesses today say that they serve customers. In reality, they serve themselves."

Breaking out of Our Mental Prisons - Click To Read Article
W Mitchell is an outstanding example of someone who refuses to be a victim, despite being victimized - not by just one horrible accident, but two. The first left him burned over 65% of his body, including his face, arms, and hands. A plane crash four years later left him paralyzed from the waist down, sentencing him permanently to a wheelchair. Having overcome these setbacks, Mitchell is a very compelling speaker on taking responsibility for our choices in life - on what it takes to be a leader.

Bridging We-They Gaps - Click To Read Article
Ask any group of managers if they view themselves as an elite within their organization, and you can be sure they'll deny it. You'll hear comments such as, "I have an open-door policy" and "I take pride in always being accessible and approachable." And in most cases, these managers will really believe what they are saying. What they don't realize, however, are the many invisible barriers - the "glass doors" - they put in place. Management perks and privileges like parking spaces or special offices create separation. Similarly, employees find it hard to get any sense of partnership or collaboration when their bosses hold exclusive meetings or conferences, hang out in management cliques, use condescending or dehumanizing language, or withhold financial statements or other "confidential" information.

Bringing Values to Life - Click To Read Article
During the 1980s, when I was co-founder and leader of The Achieve Group, we worked with California-based Zenger Miller and Tom Peters to implement a culture-change process based on Peters' and Bob Waterman's book, In Search of Excellence. Adding to, and building upon, the work of their McKinsey & Company colleagues, Terrence Deal and Allan Kennedy, Peters and Waterman showed that the cultures of excellent companies are grounded in core values. The idea of clarifying core values was new for many management teams at the time. We helped hundreds of teams in centering their change-and improvement-effects around their vision, as well as a set of three to five core values that best defined the culture they were trying to reinforce, change, or improve.

Building Passion and Commitment the Wal-Mart Way - Click To Read Article
In response to the much-asked question "What is Wal-Mart's secret to success?" founder Sam Walton compiled a list of his business principles. Here are some of those which pertain especially to providing the leadership that creates passion and commitment: Commit to your business. Believe in it more than anybody else. I think I overcame every single one of my personal shortcomings by the sheer passion I brought to my work. If you love your work, you'll be out there every day trying to do it the best you possibly can, and pretty soon everybody around will catch the passion from you - like a fever.

Celebration is the Pause that Refreshes - Click To Read Article
After forty-five years of hard work, the grizzled old rancher decided it was finally time to sell the ranch, retire, and really enjoy the rewards of his toil and sweat. So he called a real estate agent to list the place for sale. The agent spent most of a day with the rancher, riding the range and getting a feel for the ranch he would be selling.

Change Checkpoints and Improvement Milestones - Click To Read Article
Many paths lead to higher performance. The high performance route is individual and unique for every person, team, and organization. There is no one or best way. What works for me, or anyone else, may not work for you. We can't follow someone else's path. We need to blaze our own trail.

Change is Life - Click To Read Article
"I hate all this change. Why can't things just stay the same?", Dirk shouted angrily at the TV news anchor. He threw a pillow at the TV screen and clicked it off with a snort. Suddenly a hissing noise arose from the corner of the room and green, shimmering mist filled the air. Dirk stood in shock as a one-foot tall, wrinkled old man emerged from the glowing cloud. The tiny, grizzled fellow had a long flowing white beard and was dressed from head to toe in green. His eyes twinkled with mischief as he flashed a gap-toothed grin. "Hi, I am Mike. I can take you to a place where people don't have to deal with change and things stay the same all the time."

Change Management Can Lead to Rigidity and Resistance to Change - Click To Read Article
Beware of formal organization improvement or "change management" (an oxymoron) plans. Like strategic plans, organization improvement or change management plans can reduce an organization's effectiveness. They can lead to rigidity, bureaucracy, and resistance to change. This sounds like an argument against planning. It's not. We have found that constant and ongoing personal, team, and organization improvement planning is vital. But too many "change management" and improvement plans are built on the same faulty premise as strategic planning - that there is a right path, which can be determined in advance and then implemented. We often hear managers declare that they have the right strategic or improvement plan, but the reason things aren't going according to plan is because of "execution problems." This is a deadly assumption.

Change Management is an Oxymoron - Click To Read Article
A dubious consulting industry and "profession" has developed, claiming to provide "change management" services. Those two words make about as much sense together as "holy war", "non-working mother", "mandatory option", and "political principles". Many of the books, models, theories, and "processes" on change have come from staff support people, consultants, or academics who've never built a business or led an organization.

Change or Be Changed - Click To Read Article
George was 53 when he had his first attack. He'd smoked for almost 40 years, was badly overweight, had an extremely high fat diet, and handled stress poorly. This warning shocked him into joining a smoking-cessation program. George and his wife also learned about healthy eating and improved their diets. Within a few months he'd lost his huge stomach, was very cheerful, and full of new energy. He was a changed man.

Changing Me to Change Them - Click To Read Article
I can think of all kinds of ways to change our kids, my associates, my wife Heather, and lots of other people in my life. But that's not the place to start. The place to start is with changing me. The Nobel Prize winning physicist, Albert Einstein, observed that we can't solve a problem with the same level of thinking that created it. The same principle applies to influencing and leading people around us. I can't influence others to change what they're doing with the same behavior that contributed to their current behavior.

Cheer Leaders Inspire Others - Click To Read Article
It has been said that there are only two types of people who thrive on being recognized for their achievements: men and woman. (I guess that covers most of us!) Reflecting on a life of pioneering work, 19th-century American philosopher and psychologist William James said, "I now perceive one immense omission in my psychology - the deepest principle of human nature is the craving to be appreciated."

Choice More than Chance Determines Our Circumstance - Click To Read Article
The day was a winter wonderland as our family drove through the country to a Christmas open house at a friend's home. A fresh snowfall had left the trees, houses, and barns covered with a inch of magical white powder. The day was cold, but in the brilliant sunshine the snow sparkled across the fields and glittered as it wrapped the buildings and trees in it's twinkling blanket. It was like driving through a Currier and Ives painting. At the open house, I babbled on about the wonder and beauty of our 30-minute drive through such an enchanted postcard scene. Another guest who just arrived from a 90-minute drive shut me up when he snarled, "Some winter wonderland! The slush and spray from the highway was constantly smearing our windshield. It drove me nuts. I hate driving in that crap."

A Tale of Two Managers: Command versus Commitment - Click To Read Article
Joel views himself as a "realist." As a manager, he has little time or patience for, as he puts it, "making nicey-nicey." Coming from a deep technical background, he hates meetings ("they get in the way of real work") and resents having to sell changes or get people on board. "I don't care if they like me," he's fond of saying, "I only want their respect and compliance." He likes nothing better than solving tough technical problems with practical, well-designed solutions. He runs his organization "by the numbers." He focuses on continuously improving existing processes and technologies. He sets high targets and relentlessly drives everyone to meet them.

Authentic Communication: Dealing with Moose-on-the-Table - Click To Read Article
Imagine a team meeting around a conference-room table. They are reviewing progress and making plans. Charts are reviewed, slides are projected, documents are handed out, and calculations are made. Now imagine that standing in the middle of the conference-room table is a great big moose. No one says a word about the moose. Everyone carries on polite and earnest conversation as if this situation is very normal. Meanwhile the moose is eating papers at one end of the table while plopping out moose pies at the other end of the table splattering a few participants' business suits. Team members are passing papers around the moose's legs. They shift in their chairs to make eye contact with each other under the moose's belly or to see past it to the front of the room. Papers need to be pried out from underneath the moose's huge hoofs.

Referred by: http://www.searchengineworkshops.com



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