The Disease of Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley has a disease. It’s very serious. Possibly terminal. Let me tell you how I discovered it…. I started working with a Chief Business Officer in a rapidly scaling business. She was building a new business unit, was whip smart and had all the resources she needed at her disposal. She had a year…
The Price of Professionalism
While running a leadership program for a group of executives, the topic of ‘professionalism’ came up. One leader was frustrated with one of her employees, and she was trying to be ‘professional’ by handling a situation ‘the right way.’ You know what I mean—trying to give feedback without emotion while in reality she was livid that…
Trying to Get Your Employees to Do What You Want?
I was working with a CEO named Jeff the other day who was frustrated with one of his employees. This employee—Paul, the leader of an important business unit—wasn’t doing what Jeff would ask of him. This in turn was putting a wrench in the works of the business, and allowing the competition to creep in.…
DOES EVERYTHING HAPPEN FOR A REASON?
How might you complete the following sentence? “It would have been better if…”
Got something?
Here are some ideas:
“… that business/initiative/project had been successful.”
“… I had learned to play guitar as a kid.”
“… so-and-so had wanted to be with me.”
A LIFE STRATEGY IS AS ESSENTIAL AS A BUSINESS STRATEGY
Realizing workforce potential is an urgent business topic today, yet while many ideas are offered, a sustainable framework remains elusive. Constant change is the new normal; building solutions for HR and organizational design, strategically, must be both simple and adaptive. What defines a modern strategy for creating a highly-optimized workforce? To instill motivation, we need…
JUGGLING MORE THAN ONE BUSINESS
Serial entrepreneurs are often people with big dreams and even bigger lists of businesses they want to start. It’s easy to want to start several business at once and find that none of them are gaining the traction that you imagined they would. If you find yourself in this situation, the following steps can help…
GROWING PAINS
“Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.” Harriet Tubman I’ve coached individuals across a broad spectrum; CEOs, Managing Directors, Marketing Directors, Account Directors, Entrepreneurs, Managers, Senior Lecturers, Academics, Physiotherapists, Psychotherapists, Coaches…the list goes on! This past year has taught me…
WHEN CEOs DELEGATE THE WRONG TASKS
As a first-time CEO, as your company grows and the work becomes more complex, and while you have a team to help you with this goal, you’ll notice that fundamentally there becomes two different kinds of jobs to do. The first job is to imagine new ways of growing the company, to forge new strategies,…
YOUR TEAM IS LESS ALIGNED THAN YOU THINK
What most leaders assume about their organization or about any other person is that they have a much, much greater shared reality and perspective than really exists. If the person you’re speaking to agrees with your point of view, the natural human reaction is to assume that this agreement extends to alignment on every aspect of the topic.
Let me give you an example. Say a CEO tells his team, we’re going to focus on channel sales because channel is a much higher leverage approach for us….
KNOW WHEN TO SAY F-IT
I think you need to take more risks.
A client of mine (first-time CEO) was asking me what she should do. Raising her “B round” of funding was harder than she expected, and she was getting tons of feedback from potential investors that a strategic pivot to a more familiar business model might make it easier for them to write the big check.
“I know I could make it work, sell the company in a few years for a decent valuation, and…
