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Category Archives: Leadership
Managing a Diverse Workforce
Diversity in the workforce can be a polarizing topic. But having a diverse workforce is more common and more essential than it would have been 15 – 20 years ago: Many companies have made great strides in having women and … Continue reading
Let’s Improve Our Forecasting and Policymaking
In reading and studying history, I never cease to be amazed at how badly political, economic, business, academic, and media policymakers and thinktanks forecast the future. Their predictions for a strategy or the effects of a law or policy are … Continue reading
Posted in Business Acumen, Communication, Leadership, Perform / Execution
Tagged Forecasting, Policymaking, Predictions
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10 Words to Improve Our Communication
As an individual, as a company, as a nation, and as a world we continue to struggle with effective communication. Here is a list of 10 key words to keep front of mind to improve as we work to become … Continue reading
Too Many Cooks in the Kitchen
Inevitably, there will be times when there are too many managers and executives involved in a decision. This often happens for significant decisions that cross department or business unit lines. As leaders, we need to ensure that the decision-making process … Continue reading
Making IT Work
In today’s world, technology is everywhere, and we collect more data than ever before. But just having lots of data doesn’t mean we’re using it well. “We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom.” E.O. Wilson That’s why good … Continue reading
Posted in Communication, Leadership, Team / People
Tagged Actionable Data, Best Practices, Communication, IT
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A Good Leader is a Good Facilitator
As a leader, our objective must be to drive success and move our companies forward. To do this, we need to have effective team communication and decision – making. In short, we need to have excellent meetings. “As a consultant, … Continue reading
Career Advice (For All Ages)
It is graduation season again. Having just come from my 35th reunion for business school, I feel inspired to offer some advice to recent graduates and some reminders to all of us (old and young) in the working world. “When … Continue reading
Posted in Leadership, Personal Success, Team / People
Tagged Career Advice, Humility, Learning, Simplicity
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Avoid Problems
There are two ways to look at avoiding problems. The first way, as the cartoon points out, is to ignore the problem, sweeping the problem under the rug and hoping it just goes away. Humorous for a cartoon; deadly for … Continue reading
Posted in Business Acumen, Leadership, Personal Success
Tagged Avoid Problems, Insight, Vision
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Criticize Less
As leaders, we need develop and maintain a strong, positive culture within our companies. To help us do this, we need to stop criticizing so much!! “The first order of business should be to eliminate the negative, not accentuate the … Continue reading
Posted in Leadership, Personal Success, Team / People
Tagged Criticism, Positivity, Winning Teamwork
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Overcoming the Stupidity of Smart People
Every day, we experience the consequences of smart people making stupid decisions. What causes intelligent people to make decisions that do not work and could never work or decisions that have unintended, negative consequences? Arrogance: Far too many smart people … Continue reading
Posted in Business Acumen, Communication, Leadership, Personal Success
Tagged Decision Making
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Make Continuous Improvement Easier
For all companies, continuous improvement is vital. We and our companies need to be better today than we were yesterday and better tomorrow than we are today. Unfortunately, most improvement initiatives (including most lean kaizen events) fail. They fail because … Continue reading
Posted in Improve / Turnaround, Leadership, Personal Success
Tagged Continuous Improvement
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Why Be Humble?
Humility is vital as a business leader and for our teams in several different ways: Humility ensures stronger relationships: With humility, we put ourselves at the same level as those with whom we communicate. This is especially true with subordinates; … Continue reading
Posted in Leadership, Personal Success, Team / People
Tagged Business Leadership, Do the Right Thing, Humility, Winning Teamwork
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Minimize Negativity
Negativity has been with mankind forever. From the perspective of evolutionary psychology, we are all descendants of humans who scanned the horizon for negative (and dangerous) factors, acted to avoid these negative factors, survived, and reproduced. In today’s world, we … Continue reading
Posted in Leadership, Personal Success, Team / People
Tagged Happiness, Negativity, Positivity, Winning Teamwork
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Keep Eyes on the Business
100 years ago, Henry Ford said: “The competitor to be feared is one who never bothers about you at all but goes on making his own business better all the time.” To be successful leaders, we need to be that … Continue reading
Posted in Improve / Turnaround, Leadership, Perform / Execution
Tagged Do the Right Thing, Focus
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6 Simple Expressions of a Good Leader
To be a good leader, we need to master and put into practice the basics. The basics of good leadership start and end with how we communicate and interact with our teams and our customers. I offer my list of … Continue reading
Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things
In his book, Hidden Potential, Adam Grant offers insight into how we can realize our hidden potential and achieve greater things. This advice is relevant to us, as individuals, and as leaders of teams and companies. To give a flavor … Continue reading
Complexity and Problem Solving
I recently listened to a course titled Understanding Complexity. A key takeaway from the course is that the tools we use for regular problem solving do not fully work with complex problems. In regular problem solving, we determine the root … Continue reading
Build a Great (and Good) Company
“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.” Lord Acton This well-known quote from the 1800’s rings true. As countless observers continue to remark, great historical leaders (in business, politics, and the … Continue reading
Posted in Business Acumen, Leadership, Team / People
Tagged Business Leadership, Ethical Leadership, Good to Great
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Reject Equality… Embrace Fairness
In a previous blog, I wrote about Ideological Necrophilia, the continued love of ideas that have been tried repeatedly and proved (again and again) not to work. One failed idea that I wrote about is that we need to treat … Continue reading
Posted in Leadership, Perform / Execution, Team / People
Tagged Equality, Ethical Leadership, Fairness
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Team Building
Winning teamwork is fundamental to the success of any organization. Winning teamwork requires trust, openness, communication, and respect among the members of the team. The purpose of a team building event is to deepen the bonds within the team and … Continue reading
Posted in Leadership, Perform / Execution, Team / People
Tagged Team Building, Teamwork, Winning Teamwork
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David M. Shedd - Move Your Company Forward 