Are You a Superboss? Here’s How to Tell

You’re a good boss. You care about your people. You have vision. You inspire others. But do you have what it takes to be a “superboss”?

Sydney Finkelstein

Relying on averages, for anything, is a sure-fire method to cover up little differences that might have big meaning. An average removes the most interesting data from the discussion.

Don’t you want to know who is best, and who is worst, at something? Averages disguise this. Don’t you want to know what accounts for outlier performance, on either end? Averages cover this up.

Sydney Finkelstein

In the constant push to get everyone going in the same direction on the job—an admittedly critical component of leadership—we’ve fallen into the trap of valuing alignment over insight. What’s the point of having everyone rowing in perfect unison if you’re going the wrong way?

Cowardly Corporate Lions

In a room full of smart and accomplished corporate board directors and CEOs from leading companies around the world, one topic resonated above all the usual items on the table. It wasn’t strategy, risk management, or compensation that stood out among the group I spent a couple of days with last week.

It was courage.

Of course, that wasn’t the word they used to describe their dilemma. … [ Read more ]

The seven habits of spectacularly unsuccessful executives

It’s rarely discussed, at least as not as much as the habits of successful CEOs, but the truth is that it takes some special personal qualities to be spectacularly unsuccessful. This author has written a best seller on the subject, and in this article he discusses how leaders can be not only instruments of success, but sometimes also architects of failure.

Zombie Businesses: How to Learn from Their Mistakes

“For six years, my research team at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business carried out an extensive investigation of business breakdowns—not just missteps, but major business failures…At almost every one of the 51 companies we investigated, we were able to interview people who could give us firsthand accounts of what happened. In all we conducted 197 interviews of CEOs, former CEOs, other top executives, and midlevel … [ Read more ]

Why Smart Executives Fail: And What You Can Learn from Their Mistakes

Finkelstein, strategy and leadership professor at Dartmouth’s Tuck School, spent six years investigating fifty-one companies that experienced major breakdowns. He finds four major causes of failure: brilliantly pursuing the wrong vision; losing touch with reality; not acting on vital info; and, the personality flaws of the leaders themselves.