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Leadership LibraryI have written more than 300 articles about Leadership, about 1/3 of which have been published by the SF affiliate of the New York Times. You can focus here on specific issues including Communication, Compensation, Governance, Entrepreneurship, Performance, Planning, and Recruiting

Please check out the Featured Articles from our Leadership Library to get you started.

Why a Code of Conduct Strengthens Your Organization

Have you established a written Code of Conduct in your organization?

Our prescriptions for acceptable behavior are too vague. Get started now to spell it out more clearly to avoid that potentially colossal screwup.

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Have you heard this phrase before?

“Conduct unbecoming”

You may have heard this phrase from the clenched teeth of a military JAG officer about the same time you learned that “Crystal” is a perfectly apt response to “Are we clear?”

Throughout my service as a U.S. Army officer, this phrase was constantly refreshed as the highest standard to apply to the official actions of military officers.

How Do Organizations Define Acceptable Behavior?

Keep reading to learn more about how to define acceptable behavior

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Kick the Certified Jerks to the Curb

If you want to poison the well where you work, allow a Certified Jerk to roam free.

Mollycoddling is a pernicious and infectious organism you need to expel from your organization.

No Asshole Diagram

It’s easy to figure out how to deal with the Certified Jerk

That phrase is powerful in so many ways.

Smart people can often be prima donnas – I may have heard those accusations myself … the smart people part, of course, not the second (and when it has been used, it’s often disguised in less elegant terms) … but the brilliance of some people is often more blinding than enlightening.

Fortune magazine once asked Dr. Mehmet Oz about the best leadership advice he had ever received.

Keep reading so you don’t miss how to make the tough decisions

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Does Collaboration = Communication?

One of the most popular words in the business lexicon these days is collaboration.

Everyone’s eager to flatten the organization, get rid of hierarchy, eliminate command-and-control structures and collaborate across broad multifunctional teams.

Is There Anything Really New about Collaboration?

Do we really understand collaboration and why it’s become such a ubiquitous battle cry?

On most days, I think collaboration sounds more like the newest “sheep in communication clothing”, a word designed to give new life to the vexing concepts of “communication” that remain at the root of so many of our life’s challenges.

Both terms are meant to encourage people to share information, be transparent in decision-making and work in teams across functional groups without becoming isolated in silos that neither see nor speak with each other.

Yet, one of the unforeseen byproducts of this movement is a tendency to confuse collaboration with communication.

They’re not quite the same.

Collaboration is more about cooperation while communication refers to the exchange of ideas. Siblings, perhaps, but identical twins? Not so much.

Lack of Communication is at the Root of Failed Relationships

In general, communication trumps every other reason for relationship failure. If you doub that, crawl under the hood of most marriages … or consider many employer–employee relationships … even child-rearing experts emphasize the critical importance of communication skills.

Keep Reading for 3 Rules to Help You Get This Right …

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You’ve Got to Dream While You Eat.

There’s nothing more important … or more challenging … than the need to balance short-term results with long-range plans.

H ow is your organization focused? Are you encouraging long-range thinking or only what happens this week?

Do you have the Attention Span of a Mosquito?

How often are you distracted from a specific task … or distracted simply by knowing there are too many distractions?

When was the last time you pulled out that blank sheet of paper to THINK, you know, that old-fashioned approach to problem solving and the creative process?

Do you get why some people think Google is making us stupid?

All of these notions are but variations on a theme … our increasingly short-term focus.

Keep reading to make sure you have a longer term perspective

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Don’t Let Hope Become an Embalming Agent

Hope isn’t a strategy. Action IS!

For most of us, Spring is the time of the year when hope springs eternal. The sun is out … the flowers are blooming … and this year it seems we’re finally emerging from the worst pandemic in our lifetimes.

But maybe your initiatives are starting to drag?

The gum does kinda lose its flavor on the bedpost overnight, doesn’t it? We struggle to keep the engine stoked, but we don’t get far before we discover it’s much easier to start than to finish.

We begin to feel some of the air already coming out of the tires, and begin to wonder … “where did that new-found energy go”?

What’s that whimpering sound?

It comes back to that whimpering sound of “hope springs eternal.” Read why Hope is a poor excuse for a strategy….

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