The Illusion Of Alignment: Why Your Strategy Execution Is Failing

You may have communicated your must-win strategic goals ad nauseum, but without shared context—or the common understanding of what matters, why it matters and how the pieces fit together—your leadership team will be clueless.

Marshall Goldsmith: Powering Up Positivity

Looking for a quick way to give your team a productivity boost? Start by eliminating negativity.

Harrison Monarth

It’s not enough to make sure the right people are on the bus and in the right seat on the bus, as Jim Collins enlightened us in his book Good to Great. Great leaders understand that even the best players on their team need coaching and inspiration.

5 Habits To Maximize The Effect Of Recognition

Unlike pay and other financial rewards, being praised and recognized is an expression of care, and this—and not money—affects the hearts in people. Here are five habits leaders must develop in order to maximize the effect of recognition and thereby derive its greatest benefits.

The Key To Successful Zero-Based Budgeting

To do it right, let go of your company’s “evolutionary past” and take a granular look at where your profitability comes from today—it might surprise you.

Marshall Goldsmith On The Lost Art Of Asking For Help

We’re all flawed human beings. We all should be asking for help. Reminding yourself and your company’s leadership of this eternal truth is one of the essential tasks for anyone in—or outside—of business today. A guide.

Margie Blanchard

Managers have three jobs. One is to do their own work, and there’s a lot to do today. The second is to develop people, and they want to be developed, they want challenging assignments, they want coaching, they want someone to help them, so they’re not just left out there, sink or swim. Then the third job of a leader and a manager is to … [ Read more ]

The Five Cs Of Trust

Creating a high-trust environment isn’t easy, but applying these five principles on a day-to-day basis will get you there—and closer to real resiliency.

12 New Approaches To Compensation

In an unprecedented time for attracting and retaining talent, CEOs and CHROs are getting creative—from three-day workweeks at full-time status to paid mental-health days to raised wages. Here’s what a dozen leaders told us they are doing differently.

Former Best Buy Chief Hubert Joly’s 10 Keys To CEO Transition

One of Hubert Joly’s proudest accomplishments is the successful CEO transition his team orchestrated when he stepped down as CEO of Best Buy. Here’s how he did it.

Robert Rosenberg

As CEO, you are the Communicator in Chief. The responsibility for aligning all the various constituencies in the organization behind company strategy falls primarily to the CEO, but it doesn’t stop there. Just when you think you have communicated clearly to all parties, go back over your message again and again. You cannot make your point too clearly or check back enough times to make … [ Read more ]

How Serial Acquirers Retain Talent

As M&A activity heats up, new research highlights best practices for retention post-merger. The short answer? Plan to pay.

Getting Diversity Wrong

Good intentions can go south fast in a whole host of ways. A field guide to perils and pitfalls—and how to overcome them.

Herb Kelleher

You can’t really be disciplined in what you do unless you are humble and open-minded. Humility breeds open-mindedness.

Herb Kelleher

Your employees come first. And if you treat your employees right, guess what? Your customers come back, and that makes your shareholders happy. Start with employees and the rest follows from that.

The 6 Personalities of Change Rejection

Is it any wonder that so many of us are scared of change?

Before we completed our research into this phenomenon, I often wondered how rational and intelligent people could make such sloppy and irrational arguments against obvious improvements.

Today, I have a much better idea why people resist the inevitable. If you’re unsure why those around you are having such a difficult time embracing a new … [ Read more ]

There Are Only 3 Types Of Companies In The World. Which One Are You?

What kind of company do you run, and why does it matter? The key to answering this questions is positioning, which is an articulation of your overall business strategy as it relates to the customer in a way that reflects your company culture. I advocate for DNA-based positioning, which defines a company as a customer-centric Mother, a product-focused Mechanic, or a concept-oriented Missionary. That’s it: … [ Read more ]

Jim Collins: On Leadership In America

Chief Executive magazine interviews Jim Collins. This is the first of five parts.

Jim Collins

If your company cannot be great without you, it is not yet a great company. It is merely a group of people who happen to have a leader. The test as to whether it’s a great company is it doesn’t need you.