Consultants to leaders
Archive for the ‘Leadership’ Category.
In our regular daily read of various articles in the world of telephony we came across in interesting article that prompted some discussion with a few colleagues. The news article at TelephonyOnline titled “Ciena CEO: top carriers now budgeting “monthly”” caused us no end of banter. Many of us had worked in carriers who generally had tight controls on spending and significant pressure on managing within a designated budget.
Continue reading ‘Budget Fudget’ »
Leadership is challenging enough without having to deal with discovering that your employees, employer or work environment has become tainted with unscrupulous behaviors, shady decisions or, in extreme cases illegal acts. Discovering any of these situations can be a difficult revelation but often dealing with the backlash once you “blow the whistle” can be devastating. In fact, recently The Economist published a list of countries ranked according to their propensity for bribes and cronyism.
Having been through this career changing event on at least a few occasions, your humble author knows some of the pitfalls and steps to take to minimize the potential corporate reaction. Following the next few steps will help you address the problem and put some structure to your approach.
Continue reading ‘Whistle Stop!’ »
We have traveled to numerous communications conferences over the years and have observed both the good and the badly managed. Given the recent economic downturn it will be interesting to observe what happens to the main conferences scheduled for 2009. There will no doubt be increasing pressure on you to ensure you are attending only those top profile, high quality events. In that light we’ve gone out of our way to establish a measure of conference success.
Continue reading ‘Industry Conference Success Ratio’ »
Some time ago a few colleagues of ours were sitting around and talking with us about the various scales we have for reference. These include the Beaufort Scale (measures wind speed), Mohs Scale of Mineral Hardness, The Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale, and others.
Given our regular ill-informed state, and the fact that drink was on the table, we got into an argument over what makes up the four types of scales (it turns out that the four are nominal, ordinal, interval, and ratio and you can read about them here). The argument ultimately led us to opine that there was no scale of conflict.
Continue reading ‘Shulist Scale Of Conflict’ »
Some time ago I was asked to speak to a group of students about my perspectives on work, business and life. I took the opportunity to review all those things I learned after I reached twenty years old (about the point I realized I did not know everything) and sifted through the list until I was left with five important things.
Continue reading ‘Five Things I Wish I Knew Earlier in Life’ »
A few summers ago I had the opportunity to ride one of the most pleasant bicycle routes in Ontario. My daughter invited me down to join her on a ride through Wolfe Island which is a ten minute ferry ride south of Kingston. Now Wolfe Island is no Tour de France but it is a great location for some easy rolling. It also has spectacular views of the Kingston waterfront, the lake boat shipping channels, and summer sailboat races. Not to mention that the locals on the Island have a completely different perspective on how life should proceed.
During part of that ride my daughter was not her usual talkative self and we filled the gaps in the conversation with the spectacular views and thinking about where we were. It was during one of those lulls in conversation that I made an important connection between leadership coaching and the truth about bicycling. Continue reading ‘Bicycle Leadership’ »
As a family, some years ago, we had the good fortune to sail the Grecian Cyclades Islands. During this journey I read Homer’s classic, The Odyssey. Contrasting the technology we had on board our sailboat to the Mediterranean’s original sailors, I was astounded by the fact that even with technical advantages, we still struggled with the age-old problem of wind, water and weather.
We had departed from Athens along with about a four other boats. Each having chosen different routes to the various scenic islands within the archipelago. Some of our decisions were dependent upon avoiding the prevalent Meltami winds that blow in the area in July and August. about a week later, as fate would have it, all sailboats were harboured together during a storm on the Island of Paros.
What you become as a leader is a direct result of the focus and effort you put into your own personal development. Here are five things you can do now to improve your chances of being a successful leader. Take the initiative and do-it-yourself.
Re-assess your planning effectiveness. Once each weekend sit down for 20 minutes and review your important plans for the coming week. Focus on highlighting your long term objectives and the important things in your horizon. Starting on Monday, at the end of each day, take 10 minutes to repeat this process until Thursday looking forward to the next day.The cumulative effort takes only one hour weekly but you’ll gain at least 4 hours more of productive time if you keep your eye on the plan regularly and routinely.
Continue reading ‘DIY Spring Cleaning’ »
I have always been perplexed by the leadership challenge of how to minimize the risks of delegating responsibility while ensuring that the work was done right. How does a leader encourage employees to take on tasks, assume risk and still get the job done right? Further, in this rapid paced world we all work in, I find that not a lot of time is spent on analyzing the outcomes of decisions to improve the odds of “getting it right” the next time. Or for that matter determining if we truly did get it right? This follow up analysis is the responsibility of the leadership team, but sadly, it is rarely done.
While leaders aren’t responsible to analyze each and every subordinate action, there should be an atmosphere of encouragement around the process of evaluating outcomes. As a leader, I’ve developed a process of minimizing risks while delegating and assessing results as a follow up. This process has been developed over the past twenty years and has served me well. I apply it even today in my work as a leadership consultant.
Once an organization has established its prime motive by articulating its vision, mission, values, and key results areas (KRA) along with the resulting objectives, it needs to establish ownership and accountability of these. Doing so will ensure the success of the business unit.
Leaders who need to be convinced that their teams are acting on the important objectives of the business can utilize a simple technique to ensure that this occurs. Frequently, leaders find the connection between the KRA’s of the business unit and the objectives of the individuals within their sphere of influence is not congruent. Interestingly, the intersection of the responsibility to achieve objectives and the Key Results of a given business unit exist in three states: Coverage, Conflict, and Collaboration.
Continue reading ‘Managing the Three C’s’ »
