Since the appearance of COVID, I’ve had opportunities to work with executives on key organizational change questions, all of which have been driven by the goal of making their organizations leaner, more responsive, and resilient for what lies ahead. In some cases, they are working to create stronger horizontal engagement along lines of value for […]
We’ve just completed four months of the brutal new normal. I’ve been speaking with dozens of leaders who have been doing the hard work of finding a path forward where almost every pre-COVID pattern has been changed. The sheer amount of disruption to our patterns has been staggering, for instance where we work, how we […]
As I work with more teams on their post-COVID response, I’ve noticed that the repeatable patterns and powerful forces that serve us well during “normal” times are trying to sabotage our ability to respond to this crisis. We are in a unique time in business history where the processes and tools we have built are […]
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 We know that our pre-COVID strategy is no longer applicable (see article here), we know we need to be led by our product and R&D […]
In my conversations with key leaders across a variety of industries, I’m finding similarities in their responses to the extraordinary catalytic events that we’re all currently living through. In many cases, we are still working out the language for what has happened (and what is happening) to our upstream and downstream work partners – both […]
It’s a very vulnerable and unique time. In my discussions with leaders of more than 50 firms, I’ve been hearing over and over again that beyond the near term triage lies a very unsettled time. There is a tenuous drive to get back to “business as usual,” and an unspoken agreement that there is no […]
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 […]
In the two months since the pandemic turned life as we know it on its head, there’s one truth that’s becoming increasingly clear with each passing week: Not even the best firms can take out their pre-pandemic strategic playbook and apply it to their organization successfully Over the past few weeks, I’ve had a number of […]
Apocryphal story – The CFO and the Strategist are looking at a block of marble. The CEO has asked for a 20 percent reduction in the volume of the block. The CFO draws a line, pulls out a massive saw and gets ready to make one cut to achieve the goal. The strategist, on the […]
I hinted at something in this article: that there were a large number of leaders who have not had the experience of leading through an economic downturn since they became senior leaders. Since penning that note, I have spoken with several leaders who are in this demographic who have had some really powerful on-the-ground observations. […]
