Let’s cut to the chase. The short answer to the question of why people are leaving your organization is because they want to, need to, and can. There are those who leave with no plan for what [...]
Everything you need to remember about your culture’s role in protecting and sustaining your organization can be learned from how viruses spread and grow. Admittedly, there is a risk in using this analogy. It can [...]
Peter Drucker is credited with saying, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” No one knows for sure if he actually said that, but it fits perfectly with my experience. The culture always wins. I wrote in [...]
A Baby Boomer leader recently lamented in a workshop that it felt as if keeping employees happy had replaced keeping customers happy as a company priority. There were a few jokes that this was the [...]
Creating a collaborative, customer-focused team is simple – at least it’s supposed to be. Theoretically, all you need is establish a vision; goals and performance standards based on your agreements; resource allocation; training; and clear [...]
Past success only means that you used to be relevant. You have to move quicker if you want to stay up with your customers’ demands and your competitors’ innovation. So why do organizations struggle to [...]
"We think that society today suffers from a pervasive uncertainty about values, a relativism that undermines leadership and commitment alike.” This could be an observation about life in any area of contemporary society. It isn't. [...]
Your organization's long-term success ultimately depends on an intangible. It is a culture where every person at every level is focused on and committed to delivering meaningful results. Your competitors don’t hire all the geniuses [...]
What does the future look like? Truthfully, even the best futurists are right less than 90 percent of the time. When you look back at predictions for the future back in the early 20th century, [...]
Let's face it. Change would be easy if not for people. Building the sense of urgency to move forward and getting buy-in for your course of action are two of the most important leadership skills [...]
The Oxford Dictionaries has selected a word of the year annually since 2004. It is a “word or expression that is judged to reflect the ethos, mood, or preoccupations of the passing year.” We’ll take another trip around the [...]
Saying thank you shouldn’t be difficult, but apparently it is. Research from O.C. Tanner suggests that 65 percent of American workers didn’t receive a single piece of recognition in the past year. I’ve studied and [...]
Sears’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing caught absolutely no one by surprise. The company has been on life support for years. You will see hundreds of reasons for Sears’s bankruptcy. All of them are at least [...]
My SHRM “Viewpoints” post about discipline in today's workplace opened with this: Progressive discipline, as practiced in most organizations, is legally defensible … and flawed in its logic. It is rooted in the decades-old mindset that treating people progressively [...]
“What do you think of the new Nike ad campaign?” That’s the question I’ve received more than once since the company introduced Colin Kaepernick as a spokesperson. The polls suggest that I would be predisposed [...]