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 […]
We see it in other places all the time: a football team has a great game plan, dominates through the middle of the third quarter, then moves to a “defensive” plan, where their focus shifts to protecting the ball and running down the clock. The predictable outcome is that the opponent stops the run, receives […]
There is a magic inflection point in the development of leaders whose functional background is built on professional competence. It’s that moment when they tip from moving from directive to collaborative leadership. What makes it magic? There are several reasons: it opens up the spectrum of possible solutions, allows significant talent development and provides scale […]
In the retail industry, the checkout lane is sometimes called the P&L finish line. It’s that magic place where goods and services are scanned and connected with a source of payment that the firm receives value. The myriad of actions on the upstream side of that line – advertising, delivery logistics, physical location, merchandising and […]
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 live in the portion of the country where winter carnivals are a thing, and one of the always interesting things to catch is the creation of the ice sculptures. A sculptor, skilled with power tools, chisels and hand saws goes to work and amazing forms emerge. As a “most senior executive,” can you do […]
Rolling up our sleeves only goes so far. There has been an inflection point in the discussion where leaders realize that they simply cannot do it all. Virtual work has pushed us into a corner in two ways: first collaborative work is less efficient. Secondly, more time in the home office has led to more […]
Perspective is essential to choosing well. As we put the wraps on 2020, I wanted to offer some insights into some essential truths we’ve rediscovered. My friend and colleague Neely Taminga challenged the TedX community in Minneapolis to think differently about economics this fall. Her challenge was to move our mindset from an “economy of […]
I’ve had a series of calls with key leaders in the last few weeks as they prepare for 2021. The consensus is it’s setting up to be a hybrid year: we’ll still be in COVID limbo, with client firms that are full digital in remote work, manufacturers that have live operations and remote R&D, and […]
In many ways, the phone call stunned me. But I suppose I should have seen it coming – after all, it’s 2020. I was talking to a client and she was relaying to me a profound outcome of their annual succession planning review. Like many firms, they had a “pipeline” that identified those with potential, […]
