Leadership

Left unchecked organizations default to bureaucracy. People default to distraction.

It doesn’t take long for 3 priorities to become 10. It doesn’t take long for 2 people in a meeting to become 8. It doesn’t take long to move from people making decisions to committees.

The most productive organizations and people spend a lot of energy fighting what fe... See more

“I can’t tell you how much time is spent worrying about decisions that don’t matter. To just be able to make a decision and see what happens is tremendously empowering, but that means you have to set up the situation such that when something does go wrong, you can fix it. When something does go wrong, it doesn’t cost you or your customer an exorbit... See more

Sunflowers always face the sun, right? Similarly, individuals are always trying to guess the CEO’s or the most senior person’s point of view. Accordingly, you have to take active steps to overcome people’s reluctance to stick their necks out if the CEO has a particular perspective on a decision. You need to reward executives for bringing up objecti... See more

One CEO we interviewed said it beautifully: “In my daily top team meetings, I ask, ‘Who is having challenges? Who are the people I should personally reach out to at any level in the organization?’” There is a call to action to have a finger on the pulse of the organization. How do employees feel? Where do connections need to happen? It requires a c... See more

Don’t assume a lack of discussion equals agreement.

“The three stages of career development are:

1. I want to be in the meeting

2. I want to run the meeting

3. I want to avoid meetings.”

One of the easiest ways to increase your value to an organization is to reduce the friction required to get you to do your job.

It’s a truism that you always want to hire folks with very high standards, but I’ve seen a staggering number of folks fail in an organization primarily because they want to hold others to a higher standard than their organization’s management is willing to enforce.

“The best new ideas always have unanticipated benefits. So it’s stupid to require people who want to do new things to enumerate the benefits beforehand. The best you can do is choose smart people and then trust their intuitions about what’s worth exploring.”