The Reelz Channel just replayed on of my favorite leadership movies, Heartbreak Ridge. The movie stars Clint Eastwood as Gunnery Sergeant Tom Highway. Highway is a weathered, war torn Congressional Medal of Honor recipient who is approaching retirement. He is a stereotypical old school Marine. He’s a tough, no-nonsense guy singularly focused on getting his …
Con men might seem like an unlikely source of insight for leaders. Certainly, a leader shouldn’t be conning and manipulating his or her people. Leaders need to be genuine and transparent in their actions. A leader’s job is to help people reach their potential, not exploit their weaknesses. So why take a lesson from a …
I just finished reading Seal Team Six: Memoirs of an Elite Navy Seal Sniper by Howard E. Wasdin and Stephen Templin. Among the many things that struck me about the book was that, although SEALS have to work as an incredibly well integrated team (and trust one another), they don’t do team-building or trust exercises. …
Read more “Why don’t Navy SEALS have team-building retreats?”
At one time or another, we’ve all climbed aboard the FYI train. You receive an email from your boss. The first line of the email says “FYI”. The next line is the beginning of the forwarded email from his or her boss, it also says “FYI”. The FYIs continue back to the original sender of …
There is an old saying that what you measure is what you get. While generally true, this statement can be a bit misleading. It doesn’t always work the other way around. What you’ve got isn’t always what you measure. In other words, there might be things falling below the radar simply because you aren’t measuring …
This past weekend I had the arduous task of taking apart a wooden play set in my yard. Dismantling the boards and pulling hundreds of nails got me thinking about effort, activity, and outcomes. At one point, I had to remove the swing hangers. The hangers are long bolts that run through a cross beam …
Nothing is more exciting than plowing through a three hundred-page mystery novel waiting with anticipation to find out “who did it”. Unfortunately, that excitement doesn’t translate well to non-fiction. Most executives want answers, not long drawn out sagas. Yet, we often make them wait. It’s time that we shift our focus. Throw away the detective …
Read more “Stop being a mystery writer. Become a prosecutor instead.”
In their March, 2001 Harvard Business review article “The New Path to the C-Suite”, Boris Groysberg, L. Kevin Kelly, and Bryan MacDonald state that “Once people reach the C-Suite, technical and functional expertise matters less than leadership skills and a strong grasp of business fundamentals” Their article goes on to describe the real abilities needed …
Anyone who has had a prescription filled in the past twenty-years is probably used to dealing with a pharmacy-tech. Most, if not all of a customer’s interaction is with the tech. Most of the entire process of filling the prescription is now done by the tech. That wasn’t always the case. There was a time …
Reality TV – Lessons to avoid As reality television shows winnow down their contestant pools and begin their final stretch to finding a winner, the hosts often start asking the competitors the same question, “Why should you get picked to win?” In most cases, the answers are the same. The contestants argue that they’ve worked …