Tag Archives: Business Leadership

5 Ways Managers Can Make It Happen

In order to move our companies forward, we, as managers, need to get the right things done – the most important tasks that lead to success. This needs to happen in a workplace besieged by interruptions, distractions, and office chatter. … Continue reading

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The 9 Steps to Managing Our Stress

As business leaders, our lives are often stressful. Recent research confirms what many of us have observed; stress can harm our careers, endanger our health, and kill. In my career, I have witnessed: A boss retire early from his dream … Continue reading

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Lead With Questions

As leaders, we often have an employee come to us with an issue or problem. As “make it happen” managers, we then focus on getting the problem solved and getting it done as quickly as possible. Thus, we take charge, … Continue reading

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6 Steps to a Successful Team Project

Today, more than ever, employees need to be able to work in teams as businesses try to solve every more difficult tasks. Alas, many team projects start off with high hopes and ambitious targets only to end up with diminished … Continue reading

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We Must Impose Limits… On Ourselves

As business leaders, we are constantly being bombarded with distractions, new opportunities, and issues. Everything and everyone screams at us to do more. Yet, to achieve our goals, we must prioritize. By imposing limits on ourselves, we can better focus … Continue reading

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How Not to Waste Time In Meetings

In his book, Meetings Matter: 8 Powerful Strategies for Remarkable Conversations, Paul Axtell gives a strong argument in favor of meetings. Meetings are at the heart of an effective organization, and each meeting is an opportunity to clarify issues, set … Continue reading

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Get to the Front Lines

Undercover Boss has become a hit TV series by showing big corporate bosses going undercover and discovering the reality of the work lives of their employees. As leaders, we do not need to go undercover; we just need to get … Continue reading

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Calm the Rhetoric…Make Molehills

Today, exaggeration and hyperbole are ever-present. Listen to any sports event… tune into any news program…Speak with many of your friends and/or employees… What do you hear? Amazing… incredible… unbelievable The meeting was a disaster…this is crazy… what a collapse … Continue reading

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New Year Resolutions for First-Time Managers

Happy New Year! For first time managers struggling to move their business units forward in 2015, now is the time to take a step back and focus unwaveringly on the fundamentals of managing and leading others. As such, I offer … Continue reading

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Mistakes Will Be Made

Four fundamentals to executing and getting things done are: Keep it simple Focus on the important Empower the team to make decisions at the lowest level possible Speed In practice, we often ignore these straightforward guidelines due to one over-riding … Continue reading

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Simple: Conquering the Crisis of Complexity

Simple: Conquering the Crisis of Complexity, written by Alan Siegel and Irene Etzkorn, is an excellent reminder to all of us to rail against complexity and keep things simple. Even though I summarize some of the key points below, I … Continue reading

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Foster Fresh Perspectives

As leaders, we can often get stuck in ruts, talking to the same people every day and thinking the same way as everyone else. To breakthrough and come up with new and innovative ideas and approaches to problems and issues, … Continue reading

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Recap – One Key to Help Move Your Company Forward

A customer interaction and a meeting are not truly finished until we take a moment to review and sum up what has just happened.   How do we recap? 1. In a customer interaction, we need to go over the … Continue reading

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We Need to Spend “Alone Time” With Our Skip Levels

As leaders, we need to spend time on a regular and consistent basis with our skip levels.   What is a Skip Level? As we move up in our organizations, we become ‘managers of managers’ with both direct reports and … Continue reading

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The Advice Not Taken

Lose Weight…Eat More Fruits and Vegetables…Exercise More. We all know what we have to do in order to improve our health. That is easy. The difficulty lies in taking this advice and actually following it. Likewise in business, there is … Continue reading

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Business Success by the Numbers

What numbers lead to business success? 0 – As in 0 /0 (zero injuries and zero accidents). In any company, the safety of employees and customers each and every day should be of highest concern.   1 – As in … Continue reading

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Empathy – A Crucial Leadership Skill

Henry Ford said it well: If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own. This … Continue reading

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We Need to Deal with Our Non-Performers Today

Dealing with non-performers is likely the most uncomfortable (yet necessary) task in building a winning team.  Truth be told, few of us enjoy disciplining, remedial coaching, and terminating employees, especially those that we may work with on a daily basis. … Continue reading

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Building Accountability

A dirty little secret in business is that most organizations lack accountability at all levels from the leader to front-line management to individual employees: Assignments are not completed as promised Problems are left half resolved Phone calls are not returned … Continue reading

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Getting Things Done

A crucial success factor for business leaders is getting the right things done. Visionary leadership, brilliant strategy formation, and outstanding man-management are all for nothing if we cannot execute and get done what we need to get done. I offer … Continue reading

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