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Why Growth at All Costs is Too Expensive—and What to Do Instead
The business leadership struggle is real. So is this fact: You cannot do everything for your business. But you can choose to do only the most powerful things. If your days are packed with putting out fires on multiple fronts, it’s probably time to step back and fight the cause of all those little fires—to strategize for problem prevention and organizational progress. But you won’t get there without the right kind of focus.
Strategic Leadership: Stop Trying to Do it All and Start Getting More Done
The business leadership struggle is real. So is this fact: You cannot do everything for your business. But you can choose to do only the most powerful things. If your days are packed with putting out fires on multiple fronts, it’s probably time to step back and fight the cause of all those little fires—to strategize for problem prevention and organizational progress. But you won’t get there without the right kind of focus.
Leadership Mentoring: How to Reinvest Today’s Expertise in Tomorrow’s Leaders
When one experienced leader commits to mentoring a future leader, the gains ripple across the whole company. Employees come awake to their opportunity for career development. Mentors enjoy reinvesting their experience. And the organization positions itself for sustainable growth and healthy succession planning.
I have been fortunate to have some great mentors during my career. One was a man named Frank. He made such a big impact on me and my family business that I wrote a book about the lessons learned.
How to Retain Your A-Players: Don’t Miss This Vital Key to Succession Planning
The future of your organization depends on retaining a team of A-Players equipped to take on the roles of the future. If you’re concerned about losing the very people who could keep your company going strong into the future, let’s explore what’s not working, and what you can do about it.
Making Room at the Top: 6 Steps to Preparing Your Family’s Next Gen Leaders
In this article, I offer 6 tips I learned the hard way to help your family business do a much better job equipping members of the next generation to take the company helm with confidence.
Riding the Waves of Change: How to Keep Your Company’s Ship from Floundering
The environment in which we do business is far too often a turbulent sea. But as business leaders, we want to do all we can to keep our companies from being swamped by the waves of change. If navigating toward business growth and success is the course you’ve charted, let’s look at what you can do to weather some of the changes you are likely to encounter.
4 Retail Business Growth Strategies You Can Leverage to Build on Your Strengths
When the shadow of competition from big box stores and online retailers falls across your smaller, local retail business, it’s easy to feel intimidated. Your competitive advantages live in two places: (1) Where your business interacts in personalized ways with your customers, and (2) Where your business attracts and retains top-quality, A-player employees. These four strategies will empower you to leverage your strengths in both of those areas to generate sustainable business growth.
Must I Stop Being an Introvert to Become a Strong Business Leader?
When business leadership roles come open, the introverts among us usually get overlooked in the hiring process. Long-standing assumptions send most HR departments scurrying to hire someone who will be charismatic, assertive, and outspoken. This is why, across industries, introverts are woefully under-represented in leadership. But does this mean that being introverted disqualifies you for leadership?
Managing Your Team for Decreased Turnover and Increased Business Growth
Human capital may not show up on your company’s balance sheet, but your team is one of your greatest assets. If your business has set its sights on increased growth, decreased employee turnover, and long-term success, then building and managing a highly cohesive team of A-Players is essential.
Make These Smart Moves for a Future Business Handoff or Exit
Every smart move you make in business requires a clear view of the road ahead. That’s especially true whether you’re considering handing off your family business to the next generation or making a good, solid exit from the business you have built.
How Your A-Players Empower Strong Succession Planning
Without A-Players to empower your succession planning, you are building for a dubious future using weak tools. Yes, that’s a rather strong statement. So let me explain just why A-Players are essential for a strong future. Then I’ll give you some insights into how you can make sure you have a lineup of A-Players to power your succession planning engine.
How to Identify Roadblocks to Change and Growth within Your Company
You can feel it at work: that subtle drag against your company’s forward momentum. That dead weight resisting change and growth for your business. But how do you identify the actual roadblocks? How can you pinpoint what’s holding you back?
5 Signs You Excel at Strategizing for Strong Business Growth
Strong business growth strategists come up with plans that brilliantly balance the rate and direction of a company’s growth. Best of all, they use an approach uniquely suited to their organization and its resources, both present and potential. Does this sound like your strategy style? If so, you’re probably leveraging five essential skills to position your company for sustainable business growth.
Yes, Sustained Business Growth is Possible: What You Need to Do Starting Today
Business leaders get tired of settling for minor revenue increases without long-term, sustained business growth. Yet changing a company’s established approach to business “growth” can feel like confronting an unassailable fortress. Unfortunately, fortresses don’t advance. And neither will a business, as long as short-sighted practices remain unexamined. So let’s look at the growth problem through a different lens.
Are You Ready to Put AI to Work Growing Your Business?
If you shop online, use a banking app, scroll social media, or search with Google, you know firsthand how adept AI algorithms are at predicting your behavior, answering your questions, and dishing up attractive options. They perform this feat based on the vast reservoir of data at their disposal. In the business world, AI is doing this all the time, and not just for the Fortune 500 companies, or the companies that are building their own AI technology. The fact is, AI is hard at work right now sculpting the way all businesses will operate, engage with customers, and make strategic decisions in the future.
Succession Planning: How to Set Your Business Up for Long-Term Success
Businesses with an effective succession plan hardly miss a beat when leaders leave—whether they leave on schedule or unexpectedly, and only 35% of businesses have succession plans in place. Further, of those businesses that have implemented succession plans, most have only done so for the CEO position.
The 7 Fundamentals of Business Turnaround: Strategies for Success
In this fast-paced world, where business landscapes can change in the blink of an eye, a well-crafted turnaround plan becomes the linchpin between survival and failure. When the going gets tough, a fresh perspective from the outside can work wonders in helping you refocus on the core principles that can steer your business back to success.
Being Coachable for Business Success
I spent last week in London where I had the pleasure of attending Wimbledon with my wife and some close friends. Undoubtedly these players are gifted athletes but without the guidance of a good coach would they make the changes necessary to reach the top? It is the same in business.
Demise of the Top-Down Model: 3 Rules for Employee Engagement
During my recent travels to California as a CEO and leadership team coach, I read a Gallup article about productivity that echoed my sentiments about the future of business leadership. In past generations, management was about control. In general, managers could be counted on to be senior staff members; their experience was comprised of hard earned knowledge about company processes and procedures, and good leadership was based on enforcing these.
The Gift of Feedback
I recently spoke to YPO Guatemala, in Guatemala City, which was a great experience. I shared with them a three hour interactive workshop on leadership succession planning. What made it a great experience was their willingness to participate fully in the discussion and group exercises as well as their warm generosity in the way that they hosted me while in Guatemala.
7 Signs You May be a Bad Boss
Nobody likes to think of themselves as a bad boss. But in my travels through the leadership keynote speaker world, I’ve met so many current and aspiring leaders. And whether they’re newly minted managers or seasoned C-suite types, regardless of their leadership tenure, it’s quite common for people to have a few blind spots around their own leadership styles.
