Holly Green
What would you do if your best customer closed the account and went to your biggest competitor? (And no, jumping off a cliff is not an option!) Seriously, what would happen if your key suppliers suddenly tripled their prices? How would you respond if a new technology made your current business model obsolete overnight? What…
Did you catch the New Orleans Saints/Detroit Lions game last Saturday? What an exciting game between two high-powered offenses! And once again, the sports world offered a powerful lesson for business leaders. Specifically, I’m referring to Saints coach Sean Payton and how he approaches the game of football. Now there’s a coach who plays to…
Think your job has changed significantly over the past decade or two? Compound that with the complexity of leading an entire organization! Previous generations of leaders could at least count on a reasonably stable world, where change unfolded at a much slower pace. These days, the past is increasingly less predictive, the future is almost…
Is there a gorilla in your market? I’m not talking about the proverbial “800-lb. gorilla” that dominates a market. Almost every industry has one of those. I’m talking about the gorilla we don’t see. There’s a well-known experiment in which a researcher shows a videotape of six college students standing on a basketball court. Three…
Feeling a little pressed for time these days? (Who isn’t!) It turns out you have more time than you think. In fact, that’s the title of a great book new book by journalist Laura Vanderkam — “168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think.” (168 = the number of hours in a week.) According…
A while back I wrote a blog about resilience being one of the most important qualities for today’s leaders. A number of readers agreed with me, and one went on to point out another very important leadership trait that often gets overlooked – empathy. Most people don’t associate the word “empathy” with effective leadership. Business…
A colleague sent me an interesting report the other day – 125 Linked-In Job Search Tips. It’s a great read that got me thinking about how much things have changed in the employment landscape since I started my career. It also reminded me of how critical it is to keep up to date on changing…
Resilient (riˆzilyÉnt): able to recoil or spring back into shape after bending, stretching, or being compressed; able to withstand or recover quickly from difficult conditions. Wow. Talk about the perfect description for leading an organization in the current business environment! Today’s business leaders need an increasingly diverse and sophisticated array of skills, traits, and aptitudes….
Picture the following scenario. A thousand people stand bunched up at the starting line, poised to run a marathon. The runners nervously jog in place and stretch their limbs to stay loose. You can feel the excitement and anticipation in the air as the race is about to start. Slowly the starter raises his pistol,…
Every once in a while you run across a statistic or bit of information that really makes you sit up and take notice. Here’s the latest one for me. According to the ASTD (American Society for Training & Development), the ranks of middle managers have significantly declined over the past two years while their responsibilities…
What’s in store for business leaders in 2011? As I gaze into my crystal ball, I see a year of promise and opportunity. And I see new challenges that require different ways of thinking and leading organizations. It’s not just that opportunities, threats, and changes in the marketplace happen faster and with less predictability than…
When it comes to organizational sacred cows, strategic planning sits very close to the top of the list for most organizations. We all know the drill. Take the senior management team off-site for a weekend. Evaluate last year’s performance. Conduct the basic SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis. Set some goals for the upcoming…
