Thoughtful readers of this blog will see that Alan Mullaly's interview in the NY Times Corner Office column sounds like it's taken directly from work published by A.G. Lafley, former CEO of P&G, and Peter Drucker, on The Role of the CEO. It's a solid summary, though, about the critical…
Researchers at Stanford University unveiled a study last week that found that multitaskers aren't so great when it comes to accomplishments or focus.Interestingly, the study started out as a search to find the "holy grail" of multitasking, i.e., what DNA strand enables some people to so skillfully manage to many…
The NY Times runs a regular feature on Sundays entitled The Corner Office, which summarizes conversations with various CEO's on the topic of Leadership.There is a consistent theme relating to hiring philosophy, feedback experiences and other "lessons learned" in this series of articles.In this week's interview with Deborah Dunsire, M.D.,…
There is no question that the value of unbiased feedback is critical to our success. The first cousin to Accountability, unbiased feedback is rarely a welcome interloper but one that we appreciate as we consider how we might improve the success of our lives. [quote style="boxed"]"Feedback is the breakfast of…
Congratulations to Vince Albano, CEO and member of the CEO Round Table, and his entire family and team. They have just been awarded Business of the Year by the Sonoma Valley Chamber of Commerce.Vince was elected as CEO in June as part of a realignment within the Mary's Pizza Shack…
I have written and spoken extensively on the topic of building leadership teams and how those gaps hang like an albatross around the neck of the CEO ... or any leader of an incomplete team. The President of the United States is not immune to this condition and the gaps…
There is increasing interest in the subject of employee engagement these days as more businesses realize the value of highly focused and committed employees. Business Week recently published an article touting the value of a highly engaged workforce, which emphasizes the strength of this connection. It's can be accomplished with…
You've heard much of it here before ... Take Action, Plan Carefully ... so take a minute to reinforce that mantra by reading a short article from the Harvard Business web site from Jeff Stibel, brain scientist and entrepreneur.As we know, small businesses employ more than half of our private…
In his fascinating book, Freakonomics, Steven Levitt remarked that “Incentives are the cornerstone of life” … yet so many companies don’t pay more than cursory attention to them, and invariably, only with respect to the most mundane, traditional sales compensation plans.
There’s probably nothing you can do to more powerfully drive the performance of your employees than to carefully consider your incentive plans. If you think yours are working beautifully and don’t need any attention, check in with Steven Levitt to see how easily they go astray. (more…)