for instance, it helped one executive team going through a takeover to talk about their private fears of how the new organization could “push” them out. Each person finished the sentence, “I will leave this organization in a minute if…” “… if I am asked to wait for the new corporate people to tell me what to do,” said one. “… if I don’t have enough

Having the right conversations with employees

we are asked to work primarily with people one or two levels below the CEO and executive team, we have learned to interact first with those top-level authority figures. At the very least, we describe to them the pushback they can expect to experience once the intervention rolls into action. And we try to give them a taste of what that pushback may

One of the most common complaints I hear from CEOs is that on a day-to-day basis, they seem to have infinite things to do, yet weeks will go by and they don’t feel like they have accomplished anything. This is the result of getting bogged down with the small, immediate things and losing track of the important, long-term ones.