I recently celebrated my professional birthday. It’s now been 10 years since I walked away from my last full-time corporate role. Feeling like it was time for something new, I chose to move from the stability of a corporate role to the rough and tumble world of freelancer. In my corporate career, I was the […]
The image above is from a flight I piloted earlier this year. If you don’t speak “pilot,” let me highlight what’s going on in this photo: We are level at 5,000 feet with an airspeed of 118 knots (center instrument, left) and the engine is loafing along at 22 inches of manifold pressure (lower right). […]
Every senior leader I run into these days shares just how hard it is to do both the quality and the quantity of work that this crisis requires of us. We know that our pre-COVID strategy is no longer applicable (see article here), we know we need to be led by our product and R&D […]
I have been having conversations with dozens of business leaders of larger, more complex organizations recently to help them gain perspective, find traction, and form fresh insights. When we open these conversations, we always check in on how they and their firm is adapting – and at what stage they are in the adaptation process. […]
It has been an amazing and humbling week, working closely with business leaders as they lead their teams through this extraordinary disruption. I have been privileged to share the 4-Step Framework with them and talk specifically about which phase of recovery they are in and which leadership skills are most important during each of the […]
It happens in all phases of life: we step out to take on a project and we get off to a great initial start…then the very next thing that happens is that we have a setback. In our personal lives, it may be a garage project that looked so easy when YouTube phenom April Wilkerson […]
R&D Leaders: This rare skill will help you build a stronger team – but it needs your protection. I was early in my career and knew something didn’t feel quite right – but I was too fresh to know exactly what it was. It happened during my first posting with a global product group, where […]
I’m currently helping a number of very talented R&D leaders in a variety of contexts. What they have in common, is that across the board, they are dealing with significant growth and change at all levels including technical, organizational and process. Specifically, this change has led to challenges including how to scale, how to […]
“All of a sudden, I was on the defensive and we had just gotten started…” “They jumped on my first chart, and it went downhill from there…” Internal reviews are a way of life in larger, complex firms. Once a plan is locked in and authorized, the third leg of the stool is tracking its […]
I was recently updating some credentials through a major government agency and was reminded of a recurrent blindspot I see with clients who engage my help with their business growth plans. This issue is the kind of thing that is buried deep in the organization, and are what we call “gumption killers.” They are silent […]
