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Category Archives: Leadership
Top Three Things to Do Today to Be a Better Leader
To build a better business, we need to be better leaders. This does not mean we need to rush out and get more training or education or bring in a consultant (absolutely not!!). Instead, we need to focus on the … Continue reading
Posted in Improve / Turnaround, Leadership, Perform / Execution
Tagged Follow Up, Leadership, Positivity, Simplicity
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A Happy Company
The American Psychologist and Author, Martin Seligman, is a strong promoter of positive psychology and well-being. His five-part recommendation for increased happiness and life satisfaction consists of: Positive Emotion Engagement Relationships Meaning Achievement This prescription (remembered with the acronym ‘PERMA’) … Continue reading
Posted in Leadership, Perform / Execution, Team / People
Tagged Engagement, Happiness
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Best Version of Ourselves
The Australian Motivational Speaker and Catholic Author, Matthew Kelly, focus his message on people becoming the best version of themselves. This message should resonate with all of us as leaders. As leaders, we have strengths, and we have weaknesses. We … Continue reading
Posted in Leadership, Personal Success, Team / People
Tagged Leadership Characteristics
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What To Think About
Studies from social psychologists have concluded that the media (contrary to common opinion) is not effective at changing how we think. Instead, it is quite effective in determining what we think about. As leaders, it can be helpful to focus … Continue reading
Careful: A User’s Guide to Our Injury-Prone Minds
Careful: A User’s Guide to Our Injury-Prone Minds, written by Steve Casner, is an excellent discussion of safety in our lives, both at home and at work. It is a straightforward read, and I highly recommend it. Below I share … Continue reading
Posted in Business Acumen, Leadership, Perform / Execution
Tagged Careful, Safety, Steve Casner
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Three Cheers for Foresight
To be successful, leaders need to develop and hone their business foresight. Used effectively, foresight focuses our attention on the time and space between the immediate, day to day tactical execution and the long-term strategic vision and planning. Foresight in … Continue reading
Posted in Business Acumen, Leadership, Perform / Execution
Tagged Business Acumen, Foresight
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The Curse of Knowledge
As leaders we are bedeviled by the Curse of Knowledge: The Curse of Knowledge is the difficulty we have in imagining that another person does not know what we know. The Curse of Knowledge rears its ugly head in three … Continue reading
Posted in Business Acumen, Communication, Leadership
Tagged Clarity, Communication, Curse of Knowledge
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Four Ways to Overcome Confirmation Bias
The biggest decision-making bias for all of us is the confirmation bias. Wikipedia explains it well: Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one’s prior beliefs or … Continue reading
Posted in Business Acumen, Leadership, Personal Success
Tagged Confirmation Bias, Decision Making
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The Necessity of a Good Cadence
According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, cadence is defined as “the beat, time, or measure of rhythmical motion or action.” In the business context, cadence is used to describe regularly scheduled activities, specifically regularly scheduled meetings, follow-ups, visits or other actions. … Continue reading
Posted in Communication, Leadership, Team / People
Tagged Accountability, Follow-up, Leadership, Project Management
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Use the ‘Base Rate’ for Better Decisions
The IT project took twice as long as planned. The construction project to expand the plant went over budget. Why does this always happen? Too many decisions are made with too much self-confidence and too much optimism. As a result, … Continue reading
Posted in Improve / Turnaround, Leadership, Personal Success
Tagged Base Rate, Decision Making, Richard Thaler
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10 Fundamentals of Continuous Improvement
When continuous improvement is a fundamental part of our company culture, our business gets better every day and will soon out-run and out-perform the competition. Over 100 years ago, Henry Ford wrote: The competitor to be feared is the one … Continue reading
Posted in Improve / Turnaround, Leadership, Perform / Execution
Tagged Continuous Improvement
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Crisis Leadership
As I write this blog, we are in the midst of the Covid-19 Pandemic. Each day brings changes to how and where we can conduct business; we have little visibility into what the next month, three months, or six months … Continue reading
Posted in Improve / Turnaround, Leadership, Perform / Execution
Tagged Crisis, Leadership, Turnaround, Uncertainty
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11 Keys to Better Decision-Making
Successful leaders make good decisions… consistently. Good decision-making is dependent on a number of factors: understanding, experience, intelligence, foresight, and just plain luck. There is no guide that will tell you how to make the perfect decision. But, there are … Continue reading
Survival of the Fittest and Leadership Flexibility
Hawaiians and other Polynesians are the descendants of peoples who traveled by boat from East Asia to settle their islands. Those most likely to survive the long and arduous journey were those with “thrifty genes”. They were those ancestors who … Continue reading
Posted in Improve / Turnaround, Leadership, Perform / Execution
Tagged Focus, Innovation, Learning, Management, Productivity, Vision
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A Good Leader is a Good Follower
Even as leaders, we all have bosses. Perhaps, it is a Vice-President. Perhaps, it is the CEO. Perhaps, it is the Board of Directors. To move our companies forward, we need to be good (but not mindless) followers to our … Continue reading
Posted in Business Acumen, Leadership, Team / People
Tagged Alignment, Follow, Followership, Leadership
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5 Key Interpersonal Skills for Leaders
“Abraham Lincoln said that people think that the real test of a person’s character is how they deal with adversity. A much better measure of a person’s character is to give them power. I’ve been more often disappointed with how … Continue reading
Posted in Communication, Leadership, Team / People
Tagged Communication, Interpersonal Relations, Winning Teamwork
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Decisiveness
“In a minute, there is time for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.” This line from the 1915 T.S. Elliot poem, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, is a lovely bit of poetry. It is also a … Continue reading
Posted in Communication, Leadership, Perform / Execution
Tagged Consistent Execution, Decision Making, Decisiveness, Focus, Productivity, Vision
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Avoiding Micromanagement
Guilty as charged!! I confess that I do, at times, micromanage. However, soon after slipping into micromanagement, I become aware (yet again) that micromanagement is truly just mis-management. It would have been far better for me to avoid the trap … Continue reading
Use Words Well to Lead Well
Our words matter. As leaders, we spend much of our time communicating with others through our actions, our body language, and especially our words. Unfortunately, all too often we do not use our words well leading to poor communication and … Continue reading
Posted in Communication, Leadership, Team / People
Tagged Communication, Learning, Management, Meetings, Project Management, Public Speaking, Teaching
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David M. Shedd - Move Your Company Forward 