Are you a purposeful leader? If so, you’re in the minority. According to a 10-year research project, only 10% of managers are purposefully engaged, highly focused and energetic. This is according to Heike Bruch’s and Sumantra Ghoshal’s study, published in A Bias for Action, (Harvard Business Press, 2004). “By its very nature, a manager’s job […]
As a business leader, you know what to do, but are you actually doing it? Knowing vs doing becomes a struggle when day-to-day business requires triage – putting off some priorities in favor of others. Only about 10 percent of managers work purposefully to complete important tasks, according to a 10-year study of managerial behavior […]
Would you say you work for a good boss, or a bad one?Ask people about their bosses, and you’ll hear about the two types they’ve worked for: the ones they’ve loved and the ones they couldn’t wait to escape. When asked for a list of defining qualities, most people identify the following attributes, according to […]
What can we learn from bad leadership and CEO failures? Most newly appointed leaders start out looking pretty good. Yet behind every failed business is an example of bad leadership. The human animal resembles baboons who live and work in small groups where they seek out an alpha male to provide safety and security. As […]
The business press loves to attack big corporations and point out CEO mistakes which cause earnings to slip. I’m cautious about negative hype because journalists know bad news sells better than good news. Yet it’s crucial to pay attention to the CEO mistakes journalists love to point out. When Microsoft, Google, and other huge corporations […]
We see what we expect to see. It’s a well-documented psychological phenomenon. We have virtual blind spots that are created by our brains when something appears that is not expected. As business leaders, we become so passionately entrenched in our strategic vision that we can fail to see evolving trends. James Kerr writes about Business […]
Is your business thinking oriented for the future? Do you consider yourself a generalist or a specialist? Are you a fox or a hedgehog? Approximately 2,700 years ago, the Greek poet Archilochus wrote that “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” Isaiah Berlin’s 1953 essay “The Fox and the Hedgehog” […]
What lessons can we learn about leadership and Joe Paterno? I’m a Penn State grad. I was a huge fan of Joe Paterno and had looked at him as someone to emulate. Like so many others who graduated from PSU, the Penn State child sex abuse scandal hit me hard. Jerry Sandusky truly deserves to be […]
Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer seems to be taking the spot of Steve Jobs for bad leadership, but without all the charm and genius-like persona of Steve J. While it’s always easy to take pot shots at the biggies with billions, how are the leadership mistakes of Ballmer relevant to entrepreneurs and small biz leaders? Vanity […]
Constructive Criticism for Business Leaders Constructive criticism focuses on what people have done and can do, rather than targeting their character or personality. If people believe their failures result from personal, unchangeable deficits, they lose hope and stop trying. Let them know that setbacks and mistakes result from circumstances they can change. It’s not easy […]
