Productivity – Page 18 – www.exkalibur.com

CEOs: Be a General … and a Scout

I have mentioned on many occasions the Corner Office series in the Sunday NY Times which features an interview by Adam Bryant with a prominent CEO. The questions are consistent but invariably reveal an important reminder of key elements of leadership.
In a recent interview with Jim Rogers, CEO of Duke Energy, Rogers explained how important it is to be on the front lines, to employ the MBWA concept that keeps you in touch with what’s REALLY going on. He also emphasizes a point made repeatedly in Sword Tips … that a strong leadership team is an invaluable cornerstone of successful leadership. In an unusual reference, Rogers mentions it in the context of time management … that he can’t get done what’s on his plate unless he has built a trusted team, clearly shared the company strategy with them and demonstrates his trust in their ability to succeed.
A final reminder is a bugaboo for most business leaders … (more…)

Get Things Done – SIMPLY

Finding ways to get things done more simply is an elusive target for most of us. Forbes magazine recently carried an article in which Ron Ahskenas, a managing partner at Robert H. Schaffer & Associates, a Stamford, Ct. management consulting firm, talked about three key ways to get more done…

There’s a lot of power in a blank sheet of paper

Most of the time when we sit down to work, even in our favorite chair, we have a stack of papers or files, maybe a list of some kind, and proceed to “work” as we’ve always defined it … plow through the stack and “get ‘er done”.

But if you try it with a blank sheet of paper, as I did again this morning, and just sit back and noodle on the issues that are clogging your brain waves and keeping you up at night. … with no preconceived notions about them because your paper is blank so far … you’ll be amazed at how your mind starts to do it’s favorite thing … add some intellectual firepower to solving problems.

Give your brain some space to work

Our brain is not really that good at filing, sorting, recording and remembering what we need at the precise moment we need it. (more…)

CEO Round Table – Q309 Update

During the last several meetings of the CEO Round Table, we’ve invested a lot of time with leading experts to discuss “Talent Management” issues. Experienced CEO’s understand that building a high performance company centers around the recruiting, retention and performance of talented executives. In building our knowledge and insights into these critical challenges, we’ve improved our recruiting skills, launched goal and performance management initiatives among member companies and learned about the strengths and weaknesses of compensation as a high performance driver.
In my experience, few CEO’s devote the necessary time to Talent Management. (more…)

Cheating? Who, me?

Dan Ariely, author of Predictably Irrational, is an insightful guy who recently performed some studies regarding cheating. (You'll need to scroll down to the 3rd article.) What he found suggests that some predisposition toward cheating may come from events that occur just prior the incident. He discusses, for example, one…

No substitute for Leadership Team

I mentioned here before about the regular Sunday NY Times feature called the Corner Office, which summarizes conversations with various CEO’s about leadership, lessons learned, interviewing techniques, etc.
Here are 4 key lessons.

Build your Leadership Team

Sunday’s column interviewed Lawrence Kellner, CEO of Continental Airlines, who reaffirmed several points emphasized on this blog.
First, it IS critical that you have the right people on the bus and in the right seats. Leaders are dependent upon many others to fulfill their responsibilities, so if you haven’t focused on strengthening your leadership team to the maximum extent possible, you’re simply extending your INability to get things done.

Regular, Unbiased Feedback

Kellner also emphasizes how critical it is to provide regular, unbiased feedback to your people all along the way. (more…)

Ford CEO on Being a CEO

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…

Multitasking? Not so much!

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…

Get the right people on the bus … and let them fail?

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.,…