RESOURCES

Don’t Let the Past Limit Today’s Options

Leadership

Failed military battles produce some of our best leadership lessons. In hindsight it becomes clear whether it was simply a lack of resources, a flawed strategy, a superior enemy or a series of unforced leadership errors.  Errors like a lack of preparation or poor decision making and communication can often be traced back to pride, overconfidence and fear.  Usually these errors are not the result of a single mistake in thinking or action, but a series of cascading miscalculations and leadership behaviors.

 

In David McCullough’s book, Pioneers,about the settling of the Ohio Valley after the American Revolutionary War, he chronicles a…

Read more.

Hoping For the Worst

Strategy

Most effective decision-making approaches seek to identify risks and to create some mitigation strategies. But what if you could design a solution so you actually do better under worsening conditions.  This is part of the premise behind the concept of “Antifragility” introduced by Nassem Taleb who also gave us “The Black Swan” concept. (A difficult to predict event that has catastrophic consequences). 

 

When we develop complicated systems with lots of interdependent parts we create greater probabilities that failure will occur. So, we create additional systems and processes to raise the level of resilience and robustness. Taleb draws a distinction between resilience and…

Read more.

Growing Towards Who You Want to Be

Organizational Transformation

“Grow or die” seems to be the mantra for most organizations.  The vast majority of companies use some form of comparative metrics in order to see if they are making progress compared to their past efforts. Top line growth (revenue) has often been enough to provide the next round of financing, a larger bonus, or consideration for a better position.  Growth implies positive movement and momentum towards achieving potential. The good news is that companies can choose a number of paths to achieve growth. 

 

In Growth IQ, Tiffani Bova, identifies ten different approaches available to organizations looking to grow.   Bova cites…

Read more.

Help, I Need Somebody

Leadership

What if I am wrong? What if the one thing that I am promoting, advocating, and even “betting the ranch” on might actually turn out to be completely wrong.   Like a recurring nightmare where the foundational understanding and assumption doesn’t hold up and the whole plan or endeavor is doomed to failure.   There is no shortage of historic blunders where leaders were blinded to this possibility and led their followers wholeheartedly into disaster.

 

And yet, leaders who start off meetings or even worse pre-launch motivational speeches with, “last night it occurred to me that our whole approach is quite possibly built…

Read more.

Givers Finish Last … And First

Leadership

Are you a giver or a taker? Or perhaps a matcher who operates on the principle of reciprocity? Most of us might respond, “it depends.” In relational settings like family and community we would like to be the thought of as a giver. Though upon careful reflection and some honest feedback we might discover even among loved ones we are, at best, a matcher.  But perhaps in the more competitive areas of our life, like work, we would be more comfortable being labeled a matcher or even a taker.  In those competitive environments we probably feel that being a giver…

Read more.