How do you create jobs? Finally, this question is finally getting some attention in Washington ... sadly, it took increasing painful unemployment reports to get this front and center ... but from the ground floor where we live, I don't see the efficacy of some of the programs being considered.…
The NY Times runs a weekly column entitled the Corner Office, that discusses leadership lessons from CEO’s across a broad spectrum of companies. These interviews usually recall important tenets of successful leadership and serve as a valuable reminder about important lessons and how they should be applied.
This week, Adam Bryant interviewed Susan Lyne, CEO of Gilt Groupe. Lyne reports that she has learned the importance of being committed to “stepping back to think about the big picture,” a major challenge for most business leaders. A great way to do that is to grab a blank sheet of paper to begin.
I also like her suggestion about “office hours”, an idea she picked up from a colleague who was a former college professor. (more…)
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…)
Chief Executive magazine recently summarized some reasons why Chief Executives make mistakes. Some of these are well-known to most of us ... predetermining the outcome before a thorough deliberation, praying for synergies when they don't exist, failing to take account of the changing landscape.You need to solicit honest input, submerge…
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…
Patrick Lencioni has got it right in his guest column in Business Week recently: There's no substitute for taking an active interest in the lives of your employees. The MBWO - "managment by walking around" theory has always been popular in these pages as a simple, no-cost tool to stay…
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.
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.
Kellner also emphasizes how critical it is to provide regular, unbiased feedback to your people all along the way. (more…)
One of the common issues I face in working with CEO's and other business leaders is the resistance we all have to making tough decisions. Usually, they're decisions that we have already made but haven't been willing to execute. They're things that we know are right but we fear the…
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.,…