When my wife and I built our home, I discovered that leadership corresponds to the phases of homebuilding. Constructing a house occurs in three major phases: foundation, framing, and finish-out. Building a team, like building a house, requires starting from the ground up. Our values, like a foundation, affect our team the same way all…
The words you use are more powerful than you imagine. Most people greet each other with words that have no power. Think of the last time you heard someone else (or even yourself) respond to a greeting of "How are you?" with "Oh, I am doing so-so," "Hanging in there," "I'm surviving" or "Not too…
We live in an information-rich, time-poor world, with lots of inputs coming at us in any given moment. Although it seems like our environment requires us to multitask, more and more research reveals that single-tasking is the most effective approach to getting things done. Single-tasking is particularly critical to the leader who is trying to…
Growth may be optional but change is inevitable. Unfortunately, most efforts to make organizational changes fail, and the reasons are predictable. Since change will happen in your business, keep these 10 reasons handy to boost your chances of a successful change effort – and business growth. Asking for Behavior X while rewarding Behavior Y. Make…
Memories. We think of the times we have shared and the joy we have experienced with those in our lives. We also see memories in the making as a post on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter. These tools are ways that we can keep up with the people who have been woven into the fabric of…
With each column I write, I carefully consider the point I want to make. I draft the column, reflect on it, tweak it, and review it before I submit it to my editor, who does some of the same. Unfortunately, that type of careful thought and reflection doesn't always happen in the business environment. Today's…
In today’s hyper-competitive market, a burning question for most companies is: “How can we achieve a significant and sustainable competitive advantage in order to retain our customers?” After all, keeping existing customers is five times less expensive than finding new ones. That’s good business in anyone’s book. Traditional competitive factors like product design, technology,…
No matter what you do, time marches on at its own pace – tick, tick, tick. There's nothing you can do to change that (unless you can travel close to the speed of light). Time is a great equalizer; it runs at the same speed for everybody, rich or poor, jet pilot or snail farmer.…
As with a building, a team is only as strong as the foundational values on which it is built. And just as in a building, cracks in a team’s foundation can be difficult to spot. Problems with a team’s foundational values can initially look like some simple flaw in the exterior. If you find yourself…
Margie Blanchard, Ph.D., has been a driving force behind the Ken Blanchard Companies' growth as a premier management consulting firm. She heads up its office of the future, a study of emerging trends in the workplace. When I interviewed Margie a few years ago, I was taken by her keen insights and profound reflections. During…
