Nothing in life travels in a neat formation accompanied by bugles and cavalry. A lot of it shows up filthy and unkempt, prominent in the mess we’ve made around our foxhole. These lessons are typically the offspring of hubris, naivete and ignorance … or from overlooking the land mines hidden beneath our feet.
Every Tuesday, we’ll share valuable and practical leadership tips and tools to help you BE a better leader so you can BECOME a better leader. Remember … you won’t BECOME a better leader until you start BEING a better leader … implementing NOW the changes necessary to adopt the proven strategies of successful leaders. You might start by building on the communication matrix and making sure you’re defending the castle to get done what only you can do. Make some time so you’re thinking past today.
No, really, I had no intention of writing about the Masters golf tournament — again. You might want to start by looking at Madness or a Masters in Business … but, this 75th anniversary “tune-a-mint” that ended a few weeks ago offered more lessons than a kindergarten classroom.
Most of us think of Rooster Cogburn, either in the persona of John Wayne or Jeff Bridges, when True Grit is mentioned.
But, what is true grit? Never say die? It’s never too late? All those, and more, applied to the crushing legion wrangling for the green jacket on that fateful Sunday. Eight players shared the lead over a few hours on Sunday. As in life, the contrasts were remarkable.
Rory McIlroy, who held the lead over 63 holes of the tournament, entered Sunday with a four stroke lead and watched it quickly evaporate as his game imploded — he shot 80 on the final day — as contenders climbed over him from every side. Eight players as far behind as seven strokes at down tied for the lead at some point on that bucolic Sunday afternoon.
Read the full post »
Nothing in life travels in a neat formation accompanied by bugles and cavalry. A lot of it shows up filthy and unkempt, prominent in the mess we’ve made around our foxhole. These lessons are typically the offspring of hubris, naivete and ignorance … or from overlooking the land mines hidden beneath our feet.
Every Tuesday, we’ll share valuable and practical leadership tips and tools to help you BE a better leader so you can BECOME a better leader. Remember … you won’t BECOME a better leader until you start BEING a better leader … implementing NOW the changes necessary to adopt the proven strategies of successful leaders. You might start by building on the communication matrix and making sure you’re defending the castle to get done what only you can do. Make some time so you’re thinking past today.
The week just ended is my favorite sports week of the year. Some of you will say, “Nah, you got your calendar mixed up. Baseball season opened the previous week.” Of course, I could say, “but the home opener for the Giants was that week” and then you’d say, “OK, so you’re a big Giants fan. I get it.”
A few of you may suspect that’s not the reason. Not that I don’t love the World Champion San Francisco Giants and all … but honestly? That didn’t even occur to me as I braced for the greatest sports week of the year.
There are a lot of reasons why I love this past week.
Read the full post »
As we’ve all learned, most of life’s lessons don’t travel in a neat formation accompanied by bugles and cavalry. They arrive filthy and unkempt, prominent in the mess we’ve made around our foxhole. These lessons are typically the offspring of hubris, naivete and ignorance … or from overlooking the land mines hidden beneath our feet.
Every Tuesday, we’ll share valuable and practical leadership tips and tools to help you BE a better leader so you can BECOME a better leader. Remember … you won’t BECOME a better leader until you start BEING a better leader … implementing NOW the changes necessary to adopt the proven strategies of successful leaders.
Does your company have a Vision/Mission Statement that you clearly understand … and everyone knows who it belongs to?
Last week, we talked about the proposition that Leadership = Communication and I shared a communication matrix with you to help you start on a Communication Action Plan.
There’s no doubt that communication stands tall in the pantheon of business leadership, and we all probably think we’re pretty good at it. We can walk, talk, dictate, speak and even string together a few intelligible sentences. We chat with our troops, talk to our customers and vendors, share information with colleagues and shareholders. We hold meetings, BBQ’s and off-sites to talk about what’s going on. We’re all pretty good at communication . . . or are we?
Read the full post »
Every Thursday, I’m sharing a new Personal Productivity Tip to help you get more done. Each Productivity Tip is a remarkably simple tool or concept that can be quickly implemented to make a real difference in your personal productivity. When you apply many of them together, they’ll make a big difference in improving productivity, achieving accountability and staying focused on the things that matter the most in your life.
You may want to check out some of the posts in this Productivity series, including the the value of checklists; the importance of getting rid of the crappy stuff; the nightmare of the cluttered mind; and that feeling of being buried all the time. You can also leverage your resources and apply the lessons of the ARCI chart and the S.M.A.R.T. goals to boost the accountability of your entire organization.
____________________________________________
“A kick in the butt is a good thing if you’re facing in the right direction.”
~ unknown
I’ve written previously about the importance of getting control and perspective on all the things that have your attention. I’ve also identified the 4 Do-or-Die Principles to Drive your Personal Productivity System that is essential to getting done what YOU want to get done.
Once you’ve collected and reviewed everything that should have your attention (refer to the GTD “manual” for a proven approach about how to do this), you should end up with an electronic dashboard that gives you on-call access to everything that matters in your quest for world domination.
That’s not to say that a paper system can’t work,
Read the full post »
Carjack. Nail clippers. Teeter-totter. Tweezers. Nutcracker. Scissors.What do these devices all have in common? They create leverage, a simple but extraordinary tool that increases the force, or power, of everything to which it is applied. Engineers use a more complicated definition, but you and I know that we need at least three things to create leverage: a 1] fulcrum, or pivot point; 2] a load being moved; and 3] a force that’s moving it.
Leverage is even more invaluable following the 30-month economic drought. Most of us have fewer resources to solve the problems we face every day … so we need as much leverage as we can muster to turbocharge the resources at our command. Financial leverage may be one the first things that come to mind, but I want to talk about at least five pivot points that can drive your business to greater success.
Are you doing everything possible to leverage your time?
Read the full post »
Every Thursday, I’m sharing a new Personal Productivity Tip to help you get more done. There are some remarkably simple tools and concepts that can be quickly implemented to make a real difference in your personal productivity. In combination, they can really help you stay focused on the things that matter the most in your life.
You may want to check out some of the posts in this Productivity series, including the the value of checklists; the importance of getting rid of the crappy stuff; the nightmare of the cluttered mind; and the 4 Do-or-Die Principles to Drive your Personal Productivity System.
____________________________________________
When I talk to executives every day, there’s hardly a conversation that doesn’t include the same 2 things: “Why aren’t I getting more done?” … and “Why aren’t my people getting more done”?
There are several simple and proven leadership tools that can save your bacon many times over. This one is kind of an “oldie but goody” so you’ve probably seen it around. If you’re saying, “that old thing again”, I’ll give you 5-1 if you can come up with something better for setting goals and objectives.
The question is … have you really used it?
As with the common cold, there’s probably no cure … but there are some things we can do to manage the symptoms.
Read the full post »
Over 7 Wednesdays in January and February, I’ll describe 7 remarkably simple components of R.E.S.P.E.C.T. that you can apply to your everyday conduct. The ability to earn R.E.S.P.E.C.T. is a critical Leadership requirement … and we have absolute control over the actions we take to earn it. It’s also the “centerpiece of accountability“, a concept that vexes even the most astute business leaders. Since it’s impossible to be an effective leader without gaining respect, let’s devote some time and energy to learn how to give it … to get it. Are you with me?
So far in our R.E.S.P.E.C.T. series, we’ve discussed the “R”: Right on Time, Every Time, the “E“: Every call returned in 24 hours and “S“:say something nice like Mom taught us. Last week we talked about giving more “P” = Praise more and blame less.
____________________________________________
I’d sure like to think so, wouldn’t you? As leaders, we each think that we ARE easy to get along with … it’s just the other guy who’s such a pain in the ass. If he’d just agree with me more … not expect so much from me … not be so demanding and always wanting to hold me accountable for everything … he’d see that I’m very easy to get along with.
If only that were all true, huh? Sadly, a lot of us are in the same boat. We think we’re very agreeable, full of bonhomie and good cheer for our fellow man … eager to help, eager to please (well, maybe not this last one quite as much) but certainly ready to do our part.
If you want to earn R.E.S.P.E.C.T, you’ve got to be “E” = “Easy to Work With”.
But not everyone agrees with our assessment. In a recent leadership meeting, one of my colleagues called me “Mr. Meany-Pants” because I wasn’t very considerate in accepting a few well-intended comments. (This was an especially mild rebuke as she’s trying to quit swearing so much. Normally, it would have been much worse.)
What does it mean to be “easy to work with”? There’s not always a bright line between them … but here are the 4 Big Reasons that You’re a Pain in the Ass to work with:
Read the full post »
Over 7 Wednesdays in January and February, I’ll describe 7 remarkably simple components of R.E.S.P.E.C.T. that you can apply to your everyday conduct. The ability to earn R.E.S.P.E.C.T. is a critical Leadership requirement … and we have absolute control over the actions we take to earn it. It’s also the “centerpiece of accountability“, a concept that vexes the most astute business leaders. Since it’s impossible to be an effective leader without gaining respect, let’s devote some time and energy to learn how to give it to get it. Are you with me?
For the last several weeks, we’ve focused on our R.E.S.P.E.C.T. series. We’ve discussed the “R”: Right on Time, Every Time, then “E“: Every call returned in 24 hours and “S“:say something nice like Mom taught us.
____________________________________________
Why is everything Blameworthy … nothing Praiseworthy?How many times have we seen something go wrong, something undone, something overlooked … and couldn’t refrain from pointing out the error … to an employee, our partner … maybe our spouse more than anyone? I’ll bet that you, like me, have wished a million times that you’d be better at praising people when they do something right … instead of only finding fault when something goes wrong?
It’s an aberration of human nature that we’re capable of finding fault so easily. In a restaurant, we probably feel like we’re paying for something we’re not getting … the toast not quite toasted enough, the eggs too runny, they’re out of my favorite jelly, “where’s the orange juice I ordered” … so we rationalize our annoyance in those instances … and reinforce similar behavior in other aspects of our life.
It sure is easier to spot what went wrong, isn’t it? We’re damn good at spotting the flaws in others, aren’t we?
Read the full post »
“There comes a moment when you have to stop revving up the car and shove it into gear.” —David MahoneyOne of the most pervasive challenges that arises in my coaching sessions with CEOs and other business executives is the struggle to make the tough decisions. This is a deadly disease that cripples personal productivity. Usually, it’s a decision that’s already been resolved — silently, often deep in the psyche — but we don’t announce it, we don’t execute it and no one really knows the decision has been made at all.
This is a high stress point for executives. These delayed decisions constantly beg for attention, but as we drop these pebbles of indecision in our backpack, it gets heavier with each step. Carrying around the burden of these unexecuted decisions is a malignant tumor that can be fatal to both executive effectiveness, productivity and health. Jack Welch said it best: “you gain nothing by showing uncertainty and indecision”.
These agonizing delays also hijack valuable time from the organization. As indecision becomes increasingly obvious, say when an employee is not really cutting it, people throughout the organization usually see it first. For every day you delay, they wonder why you’re not making an obvious decision.
There’s a giant billboard that says it all about why it’s worth killing procrastination in the decision-making process: The exhilarating and intoxicating relief that every executive experiences when they finally make and publicize a difficult decision. If you’ve been there, you know what I mean.
I’ve identified five warning signs that procrastination has supplanted decisiveness.
Read the full post »
Welcome to Exkalibur. I’m Lary Kirchenbauer, President of Exkalibur Advisors, Inc. Please take advantage of our resources to help you build your business ... and let me know what more we can do to serve you.
Read my latest column from the NY Times affiliate, the North Bay Business Journal.
Not only do you get honesty and integrity from Lary but you also get creativity, maturity and deep business acumen. Lary is the diamond in the rough for middle market companies in need of corporate advisory services and transaction services.
Kelly O. Kay, Partner, Center for Corporate Innovation
