Leadership Strategy Insider

I was on the phone recently with a good friend. Somehow we got talking about dreams and how unique our dreams are to us.

We weren’t talking about REM cycle dreams; we were talking about our life dreams – what we want for our lives and how we want our lives to be. I’ll admit that I am a dreamer – always thinking of what comes next, how things...

Establishing an Ethics Platform requires clear boundaries. When boundaries are blurred or poorly defined, cultural-values

slip to ‘what the company tolerates’. CEOs must work diligently to close the tolerance gap. Executives, managers and supervisors must be taught then held accountable to deliver an immediate performance redirection session based...

structure a business with a scalable model that can accommodate the inevitable handoffs that come with

I began my role as senior VP international operations, by reviewing the performance of offshore sites around the world.  Most were profitable, but a few existed only to serve large international clients who demanded  global capacity from their suppliers. The UK office employed a skeleton staff with  expenses cut to the bone.   Five people with...

Like an expert jazz group, successful small companies succeed when a limited number of players are motivated by the founder

’s vision. They know the team’s strengths and limitations, can cover for each other, are experts at shooting from the hip, can change direction on the fly and are capable of multi-tasking—in short, they do whatever it takes...

Aligning a culture to support strategic initiatives such as delivering on a brand promise, begins with the clarification

of shared values—a task that is easier said than done—the critical factor is the word “shared”.  Values are not what organizations claim or wish them to be.  Values are signaled to the world by what a company tolerates. ...

Knowing what to do and doing it are two very different things.  Clearly the best way to get rich is

to make a lot of money; the surest way to cure insomnia is to get more sleep; or the way to reduce weight is to exercise and eat less. Awareness, understanding, knowledge and inspiration are critical to the success of any strategic initiative, but alone...

Yesterday’s primary market differentiation was the delivery of quality.  A company

that I founded—Achieve—won “top of mind” in an emerging market by warning CEOs (enamored by 3M offering a consulting intervention purported to deliver replication of  their impressive record) that initiatives such as Total Quality would fail without cultural...

The world has changed. Cold calling and networking are becoming less relevant as

During the latter part of the industrial-age, aligning culture (the collective habits used by a group of people to get things done) in support of TOTAL QUALITY was the key determinant of success—particularly in the manufacturing sector.  In today’s “noisy” and crowded world, inbound marketing has replaced quality the  key success factor—...