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How to Lead By Stepping Back: Five Steps to Delegation

Posted on 07/17/2014 by ·
How to Lead By Stepping Back: Five Steps to Delegation by Laura Stack #productivity #leadership

"The best executive is one who has sense enough to pick good people to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it." –- Theodore Roosevelt, 26th President of the United States. If you're a reader of my blogs, newsletters, and Tweets, you'll know I've returned repeatedly to the topic of delegation over the years—and for good reason. As a leader, there's no more effective and productive way to handle all your responsibilities. Leadership positions come weighted down with more than their fair share of tasks, because by definition a strategic initiative is more than one person can handle. Effective leaders must parcel out that work and a good deal of the associated authority, so they can continue to think strategically and get things … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Leadership & Teamwork, Performance · Tagged: , ,

The Need of the Hour: Managing vs. Coaching

Posted on 07/03/2014 by ·
The Need of the Hour: Managing vs. Coaching by Laura Stack #productivity

"Seek opportunities to show you care. The smallest gestures often make the biggest difference." -- John Wooden, American basketball player and coach. Despite what some people may think, being a manager is no walk in the park. In fact, the combination of mental work, social interaction, project juggling, time management challenges, high pressure, responsibility, and variability makes it among the more demanding types of work any person can take on. The hours are terrible and the stress is inevitable. But if organizations expect to accomplish anything of consequence, they must have managers, from the front line supervisor on up. While a manager may not directly produce whatever it is an organization makes, they do facilitate and organize team productivity, clearing the way for others to … [Read more...]

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Consistent Improvement: Four Ways to Take Your Team from Good to Great

Posted on 06/26/2014 by ·
Consistent Improvement: Four Ways to Take Your Team from Good to Great by Laura Stack

"No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking."— Voltaire, French Enlightenment writer and philosopher. While perfection may not be possible, there's no reason not to strive for it—as long as you don't focus so tightly on that goal you can't actually accomplish anything. Instead, by continually improving your systems, processes, and productivity over time, you’ll go from mediocre to superior. I realize some readers might look askance at this idea, since just about every CEO in America has read Jim Collins' 2001 book Good to Great. If upgrading from good to great were easy, then why do everyday companies still outnumber the great by a factor of hundreds to one? Surely, if the process worked, we'd have seen a flood of great companies by now—and clearly, we haven't. But … [Read more...]

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The Danger Within: Internal Risks to Look Out For in Your Team

Posted on 06/24/2014 by ·
The Danger Within: Internal Risks to Look Out For in Your Team by Laura Stack #productivity

“Many people overlook inside risks— possibly because they are risks for which they themselves are responsible." -- Michael Bruch, British business writer. Sometimes failure is an inside job. As much as we worry about external dangers like the economy, global competition, technological change, financial crises, and a host of other outside factors in our assessments of business risk, we humans are just as likely to cause the problems that bring down our organizations. We don’t do it on purpose of course, but the worst aspects of human nature do sometimes overwhelm our better nature. Yet too often, those of us tasked with leadership simply can't see the internal risks due to our focus on the external. In a sense, you might say we can't see the weeds for the forest. A few years ago, … [Read more...]

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Cleaning House: Identifying and Rooting Out Team Weaknesses

Posted on 06/17/2014 by ·

"Over the years, I've learned that a confident person doesn't concentrate or focus on their weaknesses—they maximize their strengths." –- Joyce Meyer, American speaker and author. As the old saying goes, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. This principle applies to business "chains" as well as the mechanical kind—and sometimes I’m surprised to see the weak link high on the chain of command. It was the top execs at oil transport company Enron who ruined that company back in the early 2000s, taking the auditing firm of Arthur Anderson down with them. More recently, Hewlett-Packard canned career exec Leo Apotheker for his poor communications skills and bad choices—including the decision that HP would stop making computers—that put them on the verge of mortally injuring their core … [Read more...]

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Increasing Your Team’s ROI: The Benefits of Consistent Training

Posted on 06/12/2014 by ·
Increasing Your Team's ROI: The Benefits of Consistent Training by Laura Stack #productivity

"Success in business requires training and discipline and hard work. But if you're not frightened by these things, the opportunities are just as great today as they ever were." -- David Rockefeller, American banker. Great managers understand that in order for your team members to be productive and do a great job, they need to have the right tools. Some need blazing-fast computing power; others require smartphones and tablets that let them do their work on the go; still others might require specialized instruments to maximize their performance. Whatever the case, all of them need consistent training, undertaken as often as necessary to stay ahead of the changes roiling through the business field even as I write this. No one wants to spend money when we can avoid it, especially the funds … [Read more...]

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Bitter Reality: Making the Wrong Decisions vs. Making No Decisions At All

Posted on 06/10/2014 by ·

"It doesn't matter which side of the fence you get off on sometimes. What matters most is getting off. You cannot make progress without making decisions." –- Jim Rohn, American motivational speaker. By the time you reach management, you certainly know the consequences of paralysis analysis. This "vapor lock" of the brain can kill a project through indecision and perfectionism as surely as pulling its funding. In fact, pulling a project's funding represents a cleaner fate, because the project dies suddenly, rather than flopping around like a fish out of water, pretending to be viable for months or years, causing damage to the entire organization. One of my clients, a massive consumer products organization, has a highly “collaborative” culture, which is code for taking forever to guy buy … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Business Productivity · Tagged: , ,

Thinking Outside the Box: Five Behaviors of Successful Leaders

Posted on 06/05/2014 by ·
Thinking Outside the Box: Five Behaviors of Successful Leaders by Laura Stack #productivity #leadership

"I think frugality drives innovation, just like other constraints do. One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out." -- Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com. If I had to pick just one piece of business advice that's become pure cliché over the past few decades, I’d select "think outside the box." I’ve heard this so many times in business circles, I have to resist rolling my eyes when I hear it. However, the intent has merit. Although overuse has run it into the ground, the lesson remains valid: don't let your preconceptions, habits, lack of information, and narrow-mindedness keep you from considering all possible aspects of a problem. Get outside your own mental constraints and consider all the information at your disposal, allowing yourself to see beyond your … [Read more...]

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Sowing the Seeds of Hope: How to Boost Team Productivity Through Coaching

Posted on 06/03/2014 by ·
Sowing the Seeds of Hope: How to Boost Team Productivity Through Coaching by Laura Stack #productivity

"In both children and adults, there can be a hard-to-deny link between a robust sense of hope and either work productivity or academic achievement." -- Jeffrey Kluger, senior writer for TIME Magazine. Today's leaders communicate a vision for the team and blaze the trail for everyone to follow. They figuratively fire up a bulldozer, clear out the brush, and smooth the way from here to there. Leaders make it easy for people to get where they need to go—and give them hope that they can. Coaching has always been one of the primary ways to achieve this, by offering workers the opportunity to improve. To paraphrase an old Meineke Muffler commercial, coaching can “make them fit.” Coaching isn’t just for executives. A recent article in Forbes magazine pointed out that coaching most often … [Read more...]

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The Power of Gratitude: How Saying Thanks Contributes to Your Bottom Line

Posted on 05/29/2014 by ·
The Power of Gratitude: How Saying Thanks Contributes to Your Bottom Line by Laura Stack #leadership

"Piglet noticed that even though he had a Very Small Heart, it could hold a rather large amount of Gratitude." -- A.A. Milne, British author of Winnie-the-Pooh. Shortly after Robert Eckert joined the ailing Mattel toy company as CEO back in Y2K, he convened a large meeting of all its employees to thank them all for their fine work—and for the even finer work they were about to do. Eckert firmly believed that most people go to work willing to over-deliver. From that foundational belief, a culture of gratitude sprung forth, allowing Mattel to become the envy of the manufacturing industry. While it took several years to turn the company around, Mattel made Fortune's list of the “Best Companies to Work For” from 2008 through 2013. Adding the Attitude of Gratitude to Your Business … [Read more...]

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