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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...]

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

Looking for a productivity boost? Go back to school this fall!

Posted on 06/12/2014 by ·

NEW Complimentary eCourses from Laura Stack, delivered right to your inbox! In more than twenty years of helping leaders create high-performance cultures and accelerate growth, I've identified four key factors that must be in place for a leader to execute strategy efficiently. Without these elements, execution can fail—even when it's based on a mature strategy. The Four Keys to Effective Strategic Execution—Leverage, Environment, Alignment, and Drive—represent solutions to the 36 Execution Obstacles and form the L-E-A-D Formula™ outlined in www.ExecutionIsTheStrategy.com. The following four eCourses comprise the Four Keys to Efficient Strategic Execution (each one is a 13-week eCourse): Leverage Environment Alignment Drive Register for these additional complimentary eCourses … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Personal Productivity · Tagged: ,

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...]

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

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...]

Filed Under: Performance · Tagged: , ,

Make Low Employee Productivity a Thing of the Past

Posted on 04/10/2014 by ·
Make Low Employee Productivity a Thing of the Past by Laura Stack #productivity

"The simple act of paying positive attention to people has a great deal to do with productivity." -- Tom Peters, American business author. Teamwork rules in the corporate environment. As the leader of your team—whether it consists of a small group, a division, or an entire corporation—the team's success ultimately rests on your shoulders. While the stress of maintaining high productivity may "roll down the hill," so to speak, you can divest yourself of only so much responsibility for your team's performance. Guaranteeing high performance may seem a daunting task, but it basically boils down to prevention and maintenance. Maintenance takes place when you have to jump in and fix something when it goes wrong. Preventive measures are put in place in the beginning to prevent breakdowns from … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Business Productivity · Tagged: ,

Stemming the Email Tide

Posted on 03/18/2014 by ·
Stemming the Email Tide by Laura Stack

Email may be the ultimate double-edged sword of the Information Age. It's never been easier or cheaper to communicate, which seems wonderful at first glance. Productivity should come easier than ever, right? In many ways, it does. But ironically, cheap and easy communication also means the signal-to-noise ratio is worse than ever. With email, we have to filter out the productive datapoints from the static of spam, lengthy threads, endless CC strings, single replies of “thank you,” and noisy “Me To” people. On the one hand, we don't need email adding more to the information blast we face daily. On the other, we do need email to receive new tasks, deliver our work, stay informed on developments in our field, maintain contact with coworkers, network with colleagues, serve our customers, … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Tools & Systems · Tagged: , ,

Five Reasons Why Execution Needs to Happen More Quickly Now Than Ever Before

Posted on 03/13/2014 by ·
Five Reasons Why Execution Needs to Happen More Quickly Now Than Ever Before by Laura Stack #productivity #strategy

Back in the golden age of American business—before the dot-com meltdown, the Great Recession, and the banking crisis—most business leaders considered strategy and execution two different (if related) factors in the business equation. Strategy was something arrived at gradually at high-level meetings that took days, typically defined in 3-to-5 year chunks. At best, execution represented the downstream outcome of the leadership strategy, which was to be implemented by the management team. We all know better now, having realized the hard way that strategy and execution are actually aspects of the same business continuum. In its most simplistic sense, execution is the process of moving from A to B, or from a stated strategic initiative to a tactic. Efficient execution, then, is the shortest … [Read more...]

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

Execution Is Always in Style

Posted on 03/06/2014 by ·
Execution IS the Strategy by Laura Stack

Like the old gray mare of legend, strategic execution just ain't what it used to be—a point that hit home repeatedly as I conducted interviews with high-level executives in a number of industries while researching my latest book, Execution IS the Strategy. Ideally, a strategic plan serves as a vehicle for continually reminding organizational leaders to evaluate the direction of their businesses according to their overall goals. But this doesn't always happen. Why? Because there's barely enough time to stop and take a breath anymore—much less implement a tool that may be stale before it's a month old. Today, leaders rely on their front line workers to help them make solid, reliable decisions on how to best execute the objectives that advance organizational strategy. The Four Keys … [Read more...]

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

Eliminate Time Wasters

Posted on 02/27/2014 by ·
Eliminate Time Wasters by Laura Stack #strategy #productivity

How much of the average worker's day is spent doing things that have nothing to do with furthering their work? It varies according to the person and job, but you know it happens. Time wasting—whether deliberate or not—may be the most pervasive obstacle to productivity in the white collar world. Just as you would smooth your team's way by removing procedural obstacles and providing methodologies and technologies that propel them forward, it's up to you to chop out the time wasters, too. Here are some ways to help you and your team recapture your time. 1. Root out procrastination. This may be the worst time waster of all. We all procrastinate sometimes, whether because we feel overwhelmed, fear failure, dislike a task, don’t want to run out of work—or know we'll be overwhelmed with … [Read more...]

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