Do these examples sound familiar to you? After the usual greetings and niceties, Mike, the manager, began the meeting with his direct reports with this statement, “Well, getting down to business, I expect that we’ll hear positive reports about your projects’ progress. Who’s going first?” What followed was a litany of excuses from everyone, […]
I sat with my client June (not her real name) who was a recent external appointment as CEO of a significant engineering company. She was complaining about the silos between the five corporate departments and how they resisted any attempts to open up and deconstruct the silos. “What have you done so far?” I asked. […]
I met the company chairman at an evening function. After dinner, as we were leaving, he asked if he could have a conversation with me over coffee as soon as practicable. I agreed. When we met he launched straight into it “I’ve done my homework on you and I’d like your thoughts. I’ve got a […]
The leadership team consists of all the leaders in the organisation, not just the top tier. A front line supervisor is a leader too. The great leadership team creates these skills, by first agreement then consistent correct practice: They all agree on and live the values. Every action is results-oriented towards fulfilling the vision, mission […]
Electronic messages – emails mainly – are scanned first then trashed, or saved or acted upon, sometimes later rather than sooner. They are so numerous that their power to influence is diminished or lost. Email is not the best way to deliver really important messages. Quality video, well produced, succinct and well presented will do […]
I’m dismayed at the shallow attempts to improve employee engagement with gimmicks. I expect that employees are or will be too. Here’s a partial list: Employee satisfaction surveys that are looked at then filed and no further meaningful action taken. Regular streams of one way “communication” about the business coming from head office. “Happy Fridays” […]
Leaders are communicators, influencers and persuaders, yet apparently not via social media. Despite the vast number of other people, including the very people the leaders most wish to influence, using social media frequently, leaders aren’t there yet. I’ve seen various sometimes conflicting statistics, infographics and articles about this anomaly. There are some outstanding and high […]
Tom replaced the medium sized mining company’s former chief operating officer, who had fallen seriously ill. Less than two months later Tom felt extremely stressed and was struggling to keep up with his workload. Worst of all he hadn’t had time to get to know the people who were delivering the outputs and results. He […]
I observed the CEO addressing his five direct reports, all C-level executives. It was their routine weekly update, a short loose agenda meeting, designed to keep each other in the picture. No great detail was required, just a dashboard approach. What dismayed me was the time the CEO took explaining what he thought, wanted, found, […]
