Blog
How Top CEOs Manage Their Time
Time Management for Leaders and Aspiring Leaders After reviewing the draft news release announcing my latest promotion (many years back) and offering her congratulations, our press agent exclaimed with some dismay that: “…now you’ll have even LESS time than ever!” I remember remarking smartly in reply that she was wrong, and that I still had … Continue reading How Top CEOs Manage Their Time
How to Prepare for High-Stakes Events
Success favors the prepared! When the stakes are high, there is no substitute for getting so ready that your odds of success go way up, even if what was planned never happens. Ten years into my career, I was running a fast-growing practice when the EVP of Consumer Lending at the Bank of America, our … Continue reading How to Prepare for High-Stakes Events
Characteristics and Concerns of Five Organization Evolution Stages
Organizations almost always progress through five more-or-less well-defined evolutionary growth stages: Concept Startup Credible Sustainable Mature. The Five Stages of Organization Maturity The five stages of organization evolution are defined by key characteristics, operating agenda, economics, and key concerns as summarized below. Concept Stage A new organization starts out as an idea, or Concept. A … Continue reading Characteristics and Concerns of Five Organization Evolution Stages
Get Clear
The purpose of a business is to solve a problem for a customer…which begs this question: WHAT solution does your organization provide to WHO and WHY do they pay for it? A way to think about it is that there are three dimensions to any business: WHAT, WHO, and WHY or in terms of Market … Continue reading Get Clear
Don’t Just Change: Perform Better and Grow Faster
Strategic Leadership is to change your organization the way you want. You don’t just want change, though, because change means different, not necessarily better. We could say develop, which implies better, but towards what end? More specifically we want to improve, but in what ways? What we want is to improve how well we do what we do, … Continue reading Don’t Just Change: Perform Better and Grow Faster
Your Case is the Course
Any organization is more likely to reach its potential to perform and grow when its leaders are clear about their organization today, where it is headed next and why, and when they know how it will get there. Strategic Leadership: Manage to Lead Using the Seven Truths introduces a straightforward yet rigorous way to describe and assess any organization as it exists and as its … Continue reading Your Case is the Course
Manage to Lead Immersion Program: Seven Truths to Help You Change the World
The Manage to Lead Immersion Program: Seven Truths to Help You Change the World from IntelliVen-U is available to executive leadership teams for the first time ever this summer. The program was originally developed for masters students at American University and subsequently also offered at the University of San Francisco and Golden Gate University. Executives have been … Continue reading Manage to Lead Immersion Program: Seven Truths to Help You Change the World
Change Initiatives Don’t Have to Fail
Pundits assert that change initiatives are highly likely to under-achieve their stated goals. They also tell us any number of reasons why initiatives fail. IntelliVen-U’s executive course teaches the exact opposite. The Strategic Leadership Immersion Program: Manage to Lead using the Seven Truths, which provides a plan of action and tools that will make any change happen … Continue reading Change Initiatives Don’t Have to Fail
Plan to Perform and Grow
Leadership teams that are on track to reach their potential to perform and grow have: A written, board-approved financial plan that shows revenue, direct costs, gross margin, indirect costs by function (e.g., marketing, sales, HR, R&D, etc.), and operating profit (i.e., EBITDA), by month and quarter for the year. Approved financial plans tend to have the following characteristics: … Continue reading Plan to Perform and Grow
Crisis Prep
You smell smoke. Then come flames! You run into the front yard and turn to look at your home with fear and dread. Now imagine your local, rookie fireman appears on the scene to fight your fire having only ever trained online with no real field-simulation experience! Firemen train by fighting real fires in a controlled … Continue reading Crisis Prep
Federal Sales
The best federal sales executives find that just three things lead to more wins than losses: Excellent client relationship. A number one or two ranked technical proposal. A price within 2-3% of the lowest bidder. A well thought out, implementable selling system should assure these three tenets are in place. That is what it takes … Continue reading Federal Sales
CEO Role
Every organization has, or needs, a leader. And it is true that the power of one committed, clear person can make all the difference in the world. But no one individual, even the greatest leader, does anything of much significance alone. The best leaders know that it is not all about them. It is about … Continue reading CEO Role