Much of my work is with firms that have developed strong positions in existing markets and want to find a fresh lane to compete in. These firms have enjoyed success and are very skillful at mining out a niche once they have entered. They routinely are able to improve the efficiency of sales, delivery, and […]
Last week’s post on the tension between effectiveness and expectations (link here), resonated with hundreds – thanks for all your feedback. In the post, I drew attention to the double bind of virtual teams that are struggling to be effective and how that, combined with team members’ expectations of work-life balance being elevated, was creating […]
The talent shortage we carried into the pandemic, and the shifting contract of how we work, are combining to be a major challenge in our businesses. This two-headed threat has turned the equation of work design inside out and has put our teams into very unfamiliar territory. One tangible data point from this is the […]
If you are a senior leader, how do you create standout results? You become the leader of choice to find, form, and execute on true value. And how do you do it? By investing in your best leaders’ transformation capabilities. For this cycle, I’m encouraging senior leaders to think differently about how to structure their […]
Right now, our creative talent is very open to new opportunities. And one of the main reasons people (really) move? It’s because they perceive there’s a better chance of seeing their creative work realized in the hands of real customers in a new firm. With this in mind, there is one question that is the […]
A consistent observation of firms and organizations is a tendency to invest heavily in organizational-level capabilities and resources. Programs around functional leadership development, operational efficiency and process consistency have senior leader sponsors, standing budgets and metrics written into compensation plans. There is always one nagging question: are those investments connected to performance? Like an athlete […]
I’ve been talking with a number of product and services leaders in North America about the state of their recovery from the COVID period and I’m hearing several persistent themes. One that stands out? The sheer workload and deep fatigue they are experiencing. It really feels for all the world that you are doing the […]
Has this ever happened to you? As I was cleaning out my office the other day, I came across a report from a strategy offsite during my days as a Fortune 500 exec. If your firm is anything like the one I was part of, this may sound familiar…. We paid big money to have […]
When I do workshops for firms on how to accelerate strategic implementation, rarely does a session go by where the shortage of key talent does not come up. This has always been an issue when a firm has a strategic challenge to rise to a new level. But I am finding that as we work […]
The lockdown has been particularly hard on strategists. They have been receiving much of their information secondhand: reading articles, catching Zoom calls with the sales team and attending virtual events. All while trying hard to listen for the unspoken story behind logical data. But it turns out that secondhand clues are no substitute for first-person […]
