Greetings Leaders!

Ok – I’m plagiarising. But how can you change a classic? After 15 years, I’m rereading Dale Carnegie’s classic piece of work, How To Win Friends and Influence People. What can I learn from something first published in 1937? Well… a lot. If you haven’t read this, or if you read it a long time ago, I highly recommend you crack open the covers of the book, or turn on your e-reader, and dive in. It will change your life.

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Greetings Leaders!

So… it happened again. You’re at work, trying to make things happen, and your boss doesn’t listen. Or if she’s listening, she either ignores you or runs over you. You think you’re a good leader. You have a proven track record. You get results. Yet for some reason your boss just doesn’t acknowledge your capabilities. The result? You end up frustrated. Your boss ends up frustrated. At times you’re not even sure if you can show up for another day of work. What are  your options and what should you do?

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Greetings Leaders!

I was involved in a discussion the other day with a manager about team members that are poor performers. What do you do with them? Well, there are the textbook answers and then there is reality. Read on for some practical tips.

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Greetings Leaders!

You’re probably as frustrated with Congress as I am, as their approval rating just sank to the lowest level since they started tracking this in the 1970s. 18% of American’s think Congress is doing a good job. 18%! Wow. that means in a room of 10 people, one or two may say that they’re happy with what is going on in Washington. I’d hazard a guess to say that these one or two people, are the 20% that don’t stay current with what is going on in the world, after all, it is a sample of the general population isn’t it? Can we go further to say that for Americans who care, that the disapproval rating is near 100%? Perhaps. So why don’t things change?

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Greetings Leaders!

As a project management expert, I often get to see first hand how an organization measures their effectiveness in project management. I find it intriguing that so many of them, don’t really understand what they are trying to measure. They just look at their list of projects and if they all get done, then they are successful. If they don’t they are not successful. Many don’t measure it at all. Measuring project management effectiveness (PME) is important, but overlooked by many. What about your organization?

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Greetings Leaders!

Statistically speaking, the 80/20 rule seems to apply to almost every situation. When it comes to your staff, it means that 20% of the people do 80% of the work. What would happen if we could somehow raise the level of performance of the 80%, just a bit? Or better yet, how can we move the bell curve to the right so that 40% of the people do 80% of the work? By moving the bell curve to the right, if the original 20% stay productive, and you increase the productivity of 25% of the rest of your staff, the amount of work that got done would have to go up. So, how do we go about accomplishing this?

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Greetings Leaders!

You don’t have to go very far to find a failed multi-million dollar project. To be clear, let’s define failure as a multi-million dollar project that ran consistently behind budget and schedule, that came in years late. If you’ve been around for any length of time, I’m sure you’ve involved with a few. I know I’ve seen my fair share. To give you a few examples, here are some interesting articles on failed projects:

10 Famous ERP Disasters, Dustups and Disappointments: From CIO Magazine

Famous Failures of Complex Engineering Systems: CalTech

Catalog of Catastrophe Why Technology Project Fail: Calleam Consulting

So… why are these projects failing? I’m sure you’ve seen the typical answers, Poor Project Selection, Scope Creep, Bad Estimates, Poor Project Management. However, there may be another reason  unrelated to project management or organization dysfunction that may surprise you…

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Greetings Leaders!

As consumers and customers, I’m sure all of us have had both good and bad experiences with customer service. There are businesses and establishments that we remember fondly, usually because someone there went out of their way to make our experience delightful. On the other hand, there are businesses that we would never recommend to a friend and I’m sure you can recount your worst experience in detail, even though it may have been 20 years ago.

As a leader, how do we ensure  that our staff are giving the best customer service available? Or, if they are not working in customer service, how do we get them to perform at a level where the organization can excel?

Let me rephrase the question. Is it the employees responsibility to ensure great customer service, or it management and leadership? If I walk into a coffee  house and am ignored by the staff while they chat about the party they had last night, whose fault is it?

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Greetings Leaders!

I often wonder why some companies have great leaders, and others don’t. Any company worth mentioning has a leadership program, yet not all companies have great leaders. Why is that? Here are five steps you can take to ensure you and your organization are developing great leaders.

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Greetings Leaders!

I was faced with a very uncomfortable situation last week. Someone said something about me that was not true which resulted in a very bad outcome for me. I do not know who this person was, but they had the ear of someone important, and that is all that matters. Have you ever been in this situation before? If so, what did you do? What do you think I should have done?

In this case, I was faced with a no win situation. Without going into too much detail, I was the outsider. The others were insiders. Need I say more. There are times in life when you are going to be faced with something unfair and there is nothing you can do about it. Or is there?

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