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How to use meeting ground rules to shape behavior and improve performance.
High-performing leaders act intentionally. Meeting ground rules help a team consider and decide how they want to behave with each other in meetings and in general. Meetings become a place in which to establish and work on target behaviors. Meeting Owners (see: How to Run a Great Meeting/) on their own, with their team (see: … Continue reading How to use meeting ground rules to shape behavior and improve performance.
What an organization must do in order to perform and grow.
Imagine: An organization that does not know how it will meet the demands of its current customers, or An organization that has no idea where its next customer will come from, or An organization that does not know how it will acquire resources needed to meet a surge in demand. Such organizations exist and they … Continue reading What an organization must do in order to perform and grow.
How growing organizations should go about adding systems and processes.
One way to think about an organization is in terms of both how good it is at doing what it does, that is its effectiveness, and how mature are its systems and processes for doing what it does. Figure-1 shows a way to map organizations into a framework that uses both dimensions.
The next big lift in performance!
For decades organizations have sought and achieved productivity and performance improvement through information technology and process engineering initiatives. While these efforts streamlined and automated what organizations do to provide services and products, they failed to address many people and organization needs along the way. As a result, we still have a long way to go … Continue reading The next big lift in performance!
How marketing can turn a prospect into a customer.
A good way to think about marketing is to consider it a four-stage process that goes from Prospect to Customer. Each stage has a program of marketing activities that move a prospect along the path to a sale. Attract activities make a broad audience of possible prospective customers aware of the selling organization and promote its Capture activities. … Continue reading How marketing can turn a prospect into a customer.
How to decide who to sell to next.
An organization needs customers to serve. Without customers the organization has no reason to exist. The ideal customer: Has the problem the organization solves. There is no point selling a solution for which the prospect has no need. If a prospect does not need the solution, organization leaders might be tempted to solve a problem other than … Continue reading How to decide who to sell to next.
How to be a good group facilitator to help your organization and to grow as a leader when the opportunity presents itself.
Serving as a group facilitator at a workshop is an important assignment that can help make the difference between the session being a big success or not. It is also an opportunity to be, and to grow as, a visible leader. Do not pass up the opportunity to rise to the occasion and to do … Continue reading How to be a good group facilitator to help your organization and to grow as a leader when the opportunity presents itself.
How to get ahead by working well with people who are at more senior levels in organizations you work with.
Early-stage professionals should look forward to and take advantage of opportunities to interact with people in client, partner, or supplier organizations at more senior levels of scope and scale of responsibility than they are used to working with. While it might initially be difficult to muster the courage and conviction to play at a higher level, … Continue reading How to get ahead by working well with people who are at more senior levels in organizations you work with.
How organizations evolve.
There are three to keep in mind with respect to how organizations evolve. There Is No One Right Organization The organization that will work is the one a group decides to make work, after much study and debate, despite its flaws. It is easy to make any organization fail. It is harder to make one … Continue reading How organizations evolve.
How to make sure every top team member does one thing right.
CEOs should consider the following when assigning tasks to leadership team members: Members of the leadership team are likely to be the most capable people in the organization and therefore among the most important to deploy optimally. Each needs to be especially clear about what is most important for them to do and then spend … Continue reading How to make sure every top team member does one thing right.
Role Clarity
The CEO of a successful organization ensures that their inner circle of leaders, or Core Leadership Team, are individually and collectively clear about their relative strengths and on what the group counts on from each of them to be successful. The exercise below is a structured and straightforward way to make expectations explicit and to … Continue reading Role Clarity
Form a Core Leadership Team to guide and drive peak performance.
No one leader, and not even any two, has the breadth of competence and depth of capacity to do anything of much significance alone. Successful organizations usually have a core leadership team of three to seven top executives who are diverse in terms of skills, perspective, and experience yet aligned in an unyielding pursuit of … Continue reading Form a Core Leadership Team to guide and drive peak performance.