In Presence: Human Purpose and the Field of the Future, Peter Senge and his co-authors write: “We’ve come to believe that the core capacity needed for accessing the field of the future is presence. We first thought of presence as being fully … [Read more...]
Don’t Just Do Something. Stand There!
As we rush from meeting to meeting, task to task, project to project, how and when do we take the time to ask ourselves if we are doing more at the expense of “being” less? John Kotter talks of this as “false urgency.” We’ve all gotten very good at … [Read more...]
How Healthy are You?
In their new book, Beyond Performance: How Great Organizations Build Ultimate Competitive Advantage (Wiley, 2011), Scott Keller and Colin Price make the case that organizational health is vital for sustaining high performance. They posit that … [Read more...]
When Leading Change, There is No End Zone
Doing change work there always comes a point early on, when structural changes have been announced and are almost complete, that someone will say, “Okay, the change is done. Now let’s get back to business.” This is the moment when I tell them (after … [Read more...]
Don’t Empower. Lead.
In our work we hear the word ‘empowerment’ a lot. I have to confess I’m not a big fan of this word. It is over-used and perpetuates a hierarchical, “I have power and if you’re good I’ll share some with you” view of leadership. In a business … [Read more...]
Change Leadership
I had an exchange with a leader a while back in which he stated, “I can’t wait until things get back to normal around here.” I asked him what he meant. He said, “Well, once we get done with all this ‘change stuff’ and get back to our jobs.” If there … [Read more...]
Cultivating Leadership
There are flowers blooming all around us at the moment so I had a thought. (Always dangerous!). We can’t make a flower; but we can create the conditions in which a flower will grow. We can cultivate the soil, provide water, air, and sunlight and over … [Read more...]
Planning To Do and “To Don’t”
In my last post , I wrote about how we can approach planning in a way that allows for greater reflection, collaboration, and dialogue that invites creativity and innovation to the process. I know many teams that have become quite good at slowing … [Read more...]
Planning Season Approaches
It's planning season for many organizations. How can you ensure that you aren't missing anything as you build your plans for FY12? We are reminding our clients that as they work to decide what they will do to drive the business from A to B, they … [Read more...]
Leadership 24/7
Words have power; and we are never not leading. Let me explain. At a multi-day leadership team meeting, one of the leaders in attendance was becoming frustrated with the direction of the conversation so he said, “This makes no sense to me.” The … [Read more...]