Reflecting on the recent election, the Harris campaign's lack of a clear and compelling vision became evident in contrast to Trump’s well-communicated stance, making it challenging for voters to see her future for America. Drawing from the change formula, a successful campaign requires acknowledging dissatisfaction, defining a visionary goal, and setting clear steps toward achieving it—elements that were more apparent in Obama’s 2008 campaign, where “hope and change” aligned with voters' aspirations and activated widespread engagement. Ultimately, the Harris campaign's struggles highlight the need for leaders to craft a vision that resonates powerfully and unites people around a shared purpose, as fear alone can often overshadow hope if it lacks sufficient clarity and preparation.
As Election Day 2024 nears, reflecting on Abraham Lincoln’s legacy offers valuable insights into adaptive leadership, resilience, and unity. Known for his humility, conviction, and strategic flexibility, Lincoln showed how true leaders use disruptions to inspire lasting change. This election, we can look to Lincoln’s example of courage and empathy, guiding us to face challenges boldly and strive for a united future.
Conflict at work is inevitable, but with the right tools, it can become an opportunity for growth. In this post we explore how leaders can guide teams through conflict by understanding how the brain processes emotions through the downstairs, middle room, and upstairs functions of the brain.
Belief-behavior conversations, as we discussed in our e-book: Revitalize and Retain Staff, aim to address the root causes behind actions, rather than merely correcting surface-level behavior. Pixar’s leadership used this approach to facilitate open, meaningful dialogues, helping the team uncover the underlying beliefs fueling their actions. Once these beliefs were identified, leaders guided team members toward reframing them, creating lasting behavioral change.
Discover how LinkedIn transformed employee growth and retention with the Leadership Growth Lattice, a modern alternative to traditional career ladders. By encouraging skill development, cross-functional teamwork, mentorship, volunteerism, and alignment with personal life goals, LinkedIn fostered a culture of continuous learning and flexibility. This holistic approach empowered employees, reduced turnover, and fueled innovation, positioning LinkedIn as a top employer in the competitive tech industry.
August is a time when a board or organization should start to look at their strategic plan and decide whether they need to update it or create a new one. One such organization did reach out, having not a lot of other options, and decided to work with me on their strategic plan. Here’s what we did in 30 days…
When I start to tackle a vision for a new project, committee or for an organization, I think of it as “change.” You are asking a group of people to go from where it’s comfortable, familiar and the way they’ve always done something to a new place that can be scary, as well as exciting. That’s a big ask. You’re asking people to change and realize your vision. Implementing a successful vision shouldn’t be left to the elite or once-in-a-generation geniuses. You can do it too. You’ve heard the quote 10% inspiration, 90% perspiration. I think there’s a lot of that quote in the implementation of vision statements.
Perhaps contrary to popular opinion, defining and exercising your organizational values is one of the most powerful tools you have at your disposal as a leader of your organization. Workplace values set the tone for your chamber or association’s culture, and they identify what your organization, as a whole, cares about.
The One Page Strategy (OPS) has helped me put all my strategic and yearly plans and goals all on one sheet. The idea is that by putting it on one sheet you can look at it throughout the year to make progress on those goals.
Not only are all your goals and projects on one sheet, it also holds you accountable as you look at it from time to time throughout the year to measure your effectiveness in achieving your goals.
There are always three things going on in any transaction or more importantly group/team/department/company: tasks, processes, and relationships. You can imagine that most of us focus a majority of our time on tasks (60%), A good organization focuses some of their energy on good processes (30%). This leaves about 10% just to focus on relationships which is actually the hardest and perhaps the most important thing to focus on as companies can always make a new machine, a new process, more tasks, but it's culture and people make up the differential factor between a good company and a great company.
One of the biggest challenges we run into when we work with organizations is that GenX does not have the fundamental competency and skill set to think strategically for the organization. This isn’t a slight at GenX; I don’t believe the organizations have prepared them well nor have organizations invested the necessary resources for GenX to be where they need to be at this stage of the game. Whether in meetings or on the shop floor or helping prep for a presentation, we find that many GenXers have a tendency to stay at an operational, 10,000 foot thinking capacity.
