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  • 2010
    • July
      • Levers for Change
        07/14/10


        Levers For Change

        Years ago I read a book entitle "Strategies that Work". It's a great book that broke the strategic planning process down quite well with many practical steps for strategy formulation and deployment.

        What has stuck with me for all

    • April
      • Leadership & Courage
        04/02/10


        Leadership & Courage

        Leading in times of certainty and little ambiguity requires courage, but of the ordinary kind.

        Leading in times of ambiguity and uncertainty requires a special measure of courage.

        Creating an environment (being open and receptive)

    • March
      • Culture Kaizen: Unique Approach to Culture Transformation
        03/17/10


        Culture Kaizen: Unique Approach to Culture Transformation

        Overview. A quick look in the rearview mirror at the last 18 months has left many leaders with sweaty palms on the steering wheel, a rapid pulse and a strong sense of “I don’t want go through that again!”. For those tha

    • February
      • Creativity and Innovation Impact Session: Client Highlight
        02/15/10


        Creativity and Innovation Impact Session: Client Highlight

        Last week we had the opportunity to collaborate with a client to design and facilitate a well received Impact session on Creativity & Innovation. For this process we partnered with long time friend and consulting

    • January
      • Culture Change via Team Based Management: Client Case Highlight
        01/22/10


        Culture Change via Team Based Management: Client Case Highlight

        Just last month I spent a week with a client I’ve been consulting with for about three years now. Typical of many of our clients and most organizations, they are wrestling with a few key issues:

        • How t

      • Using Appreciative Inquiry for Strategic Change: Client Case Highlight.
        01/08/10


        Client Case & Highlight
        Recently we had an opportunity to build a planned change consulting project for one of our clients. The impetus for this project was a major change in organizational structure accompanied by a high level leadership transition. It’s important to capital

  • 2009
    • November
      • Directive Leadership
        11/09/09


        Directive Leadership

        “Hey, can you please help me find…
        Ever been lost or directionally challenged? When is the last time you asked someone for directions? By the time we ask for directions we have admitted that we don’t have the ability, knowledge or experience to get

    • October
      • Delegation: The Lies We Tell & Semantics
        10/19/09


        Delegation: The Lies We Tell & Semantics

        Delegation is a consistent focal point for leaders who want to improve their effectiveness. It’s how things get done. Effective delegation requires leaders to first test their thinking and mental model for delegation before they

      • Leveraging the "New Leader" Status.
        10/09/09


        The leadership transition marks the beginning of a critical time and is often associated with significant change. Organizations expend valuable resources to find, hire and relocate leaders. Concurrent with this, organizations often have high performance expectations and complex dynamic

      • Meeting Effectiveness Article.
        10/02/09


        Making the Most of Meetings: Meetings by Design

        In our experience training leaders to conduct effective meetings we've found that most meetings are "dead on arrival". Many meetings are doomed to fail- by design.

        In our one day "Making the Most

    • September
      • Dynamic Leadership
        09/24/09


        Four Situational Leadership Approaches

        In LSSD, to drive home the effective and dynamic practice of leadership, we leverage Situational Leadership pioneered by Hersey and Blanchard. This simple framework has proven to be an excellent way of conveying the most basic aspects o

      • Follower Readiness
        09/15/09


        Follower Readiness.

        Leadership as a Dynamic Set of
        Practices.

        During our Leadership Skill & Style Development (LSSD) program we challenge participants to acknowledge their assumptions and beliefs regarding effective leadership. One question we pose to pa

      • Employee Engagement: Guidelines for Survey Guided Development
        09/08/09


        Guidelines for Survey Guided Development

        Organizational surveys and assessments can be powerful tools for improving employee engagement and organizational effectiveness- or not. No doubt about it, some tools are better than others. However, this is one of those areas where a

  • 2008
    • September
      • The Transformation Puzzle
        09/30/08


        Solving The Transformation Puzzle.
        Transformation requires significant change. The goal of transformation is to achieve substantial competitive advantage and to begin working today toward securing a successful future. Not just a few things must change to transform an enterprise, bu

    • May
      • "Model" Leadership Teams: Introduction
        05/21/08


        I’ve found that many of the tools from the LEAN / Six Sigma toolkit also help clients understand and address some of the more difficult and subjective aspects of organizational change and effectiveness. Creating and using “models” can accelerate understanding and transformation.
        <

    • April
      • Team Based Management Primer
        04/23/08


        Living in Michigan, I don’t get goose bumps when it’s cold out anymore. I do get bumps when I hear really good music and when I get to thinking, talking and consulting in Team Based Management- sick, but true. The reason for the bumps is that I cannot think of any other single change tha

      • Defining Organizational Culture— I
        04/18/08


        Organizational Culture.
        I’ve watched the understanding and application of organizational culture go from relatively unknown and novel to an acknowledged and necessary element of organizational functioning and advantage. We’ve worked hard with our clients to help them understand c

      • About My Blog
        04/15/08

        This site is intended to provide visitors with information, perspective, tools and guidance in the areas of leadership, team and organizational effectiveness. Leaders at all levels as well as those in the “development” (HR, consulting, etc.) community may find this a useful place to visit, to

      • Welcome!
        04/03/08


        Change. A simple word with just one syllable and a straight-forward meaning: “to make into a different form.” But, in organizations, that simple word represents a complex series of events that, if not managed properly, can spin a company into chaos. It is an undeniable fact that change d