communicate

Teach Employees the Business of Your Business

This won’t come as a surprise to anyone who hasn’t been asleep at the wheel lately, but we don’t work in the same business world as 20, 10, or even five years ago. Things move so fast these days that much of what we learned about how to lead an organization no longer applies. It…

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Are Dumb Rules Killing Innovation in Your Company?

Innovation is the process of coming up with new ideas and/or putting together existing ideas, products or services in new and different ways to achieve value. In order to do that, we sometimes have to first get rid of the obstacles that are getting in the way. One quick and simple method for eliminating barriers…

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How to Give Four Generations Feedback

I had one of those defining moments in life the other day. I went to the doctor for a minor ailment, and for the first time I noticed that the person wearing the stethoscope was younger than me! My prevailing view of the world says that authority figures – doctors, judges, teachers, etc. – should…

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Too Busy to Keep Up? Develop Resilience.

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….

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How to Build Trust Through Better Listening

I ran across a quote the other day that resonated with me: The organization of today will require leadership that can operate on the edge of chaos by relinquishing command and control and creating an environment of mutual trust and respect. Two things struck me about this quote. One, just how much today’s leadership model…

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Tear Down These Walls!

In 1987, president Ronald Reagan gave his famous speech in which he implored Soviet Prime Minister Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall!” I’m going to paraphrase his history-altering quote and urge today’s business leaders to tear down these walls! Which walls? The ones that get in the way of cross-communication within organizations and prevent…

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More Medicine for Your Complexity Complex

It seems like I touched a nerve with my two recent blogs on complexity. The feedback I’ve received from clients and business associates reinforces my belief that managing complexity represents one of today’s most compelling leadership issues. With that in mind, here are some more strategies for keeping your organization ahead of the complexity curve:…

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Does Your Culture Support Innovation?

There’s a lot of people talking about innovation these days, myself included. The good news is that business leaders seem to be sitting up and taking notice of this important subject. The bad news is that once a topic becomes popular in the media, people have a tendency to see it as the next “management…

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Are Your Thought Bubbles Killing Your Strategic Plan?

Those who follow my blog or have heard me speak to business groups and conventions know that I constantly talk about the dangers of MSU, or making stuff up. Making stuff up occurs when we listen to the thought bubbles inside our heads that tell us the world must be a certain way; when we…

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The New Inside Track to Connecting with Customers

It’s no secret that more and more companies are using Twitter and other social media to connect with their customer base. But just who are they Tweeting and what kinds of results are they getting? Socialmediatoday recently published a fascinating survey report entitled “The Coming Change in Social Media Business Applications: Separating the Biz from…

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Labor Day: A Tribute to the American Worker

To most Americans, Labor Day represents just another three-day weekend that signals the end of summer and a return to school for the kids. But as with all holidays, there’s more to it than the barbeques, beach bashes and family get-togethers. Created by the Central Labor Union of New York, a forerunner of various trade…

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Key Leadership and Management Messages

What are you saying and who are you saying it to? Remember that, in a void, employees will fill in the blanks with meaning and interpretation typically much worse than the truth! They will MSU (make stuff up). We are all quite good at it; interpreting body language, tone and inflection and often jumping straight…

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