We all love summer, right? It’s the season of beach trips, cookouts, and family vacations. Yet if you are a business owner or entrepreneur, you may dread this season. The dog days of summer have been a challenge for countless businesses. While sales may slightly drop, the biggest challenge leaders face is a summer mindset […]
In the film industry, when an actor’s performance is not up to par, it is often blamed on the director. It isn’t that the actor doesn’t have responsibility for his own work, but rather the director is responsible for providing insightful direction, motivation, and resources to the full team of performers so they can all […]
Thanks to technological innovations, the world is faster than ever with no signs of it slowing down. Email, team communication software, and smartphones not only streamlined our workflow but left little excuse for a slow response or delayed work output. Is your business able to keep up? As an advisor, I’ve seen many leaders who […]
During the past decade, many leaders have begun to realize that both teamwork and competition are critical to success. How can these two traits coexist in the same office? It seems like a blatant contradiction. However, for a business to thrive, its leaders need to encourage a balance of coworker collaboration and a drive for […]
Just like every other employee, each leader handles conflict differently. Some will shut themselves in their office and say “handle it yourselves,” while others will dive into the action and see what they can do to help find a solution and ultimately, create a more productive team. When an employee has a grievance, a leader […]
Of all the national holidays in the US, Labor Day has become the most meaningless. Veterans’ Day, Memorial Day, Presidents’ Day, Independence Day, Columbus Day, Martin Luther King Day – all of these holidays inspire us to at least pay lip service to their origins, even if we don’t actively celebrate them. But Labor Day? […]
The truth is that most people are afraid to ask questions—whether from years of conditioning within a company or plain old human nature. Whatever natural curiosity they had as children tends to get discouraged in most large organizations. Leaders assume following the status quo is the right way to go and are not interested in […]
On a recent flight back to New York from Chicago (two and a half hours) I turned my phone back on after we touched down and found that I had received eighty-seven email messages and five voicemails while I was in flight. I shudder to think what will happen on my next flight to Tokyo. […]
People in different departments within companies are often in the habit of talking only among themselves instead of sharing information with other departments who need it. In fact, the lack of communication between the functional units of the company has become so common that most people accept it as the norm. Within a given organization, […]
It happened again just the other day. I was walking out of a conference room where we had been in a two-hour meeting. Nothing was resolved. I needed to speak with the CEO so I asked him if he would join me for a coffee. He said, “I really want to, but I’m in meetings […]
