1: “Eliciting people’s internal commitment to pursue a common goal is the job of every leader,” writes Fred Kofman in his terrific book The Meaning Revolution: The Power of Transcendent Leadership.

We seek “the internal commitment of our followers to pursue a common goal, giving the best of themselves because they want to, because they find it intrinsically valuable beyond external incentives.” 

So how do we do that? 

“By … continue reading

1: What we feel impacts what we see.  And hear.

“People who are scared take in a scene differently,” David Brooks writes in his book How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen.

“Our ears, for example, immediately adjust to focus on high and low frequencies—a scream or a growl—rather than midrange frequencies, which include normal human speech,” David notes.  “Anxiety narrows … continue reading

1: Splat.  

A multiyear Research & Development project for the Dutch firm DSM‘s picture frame glass business had failed.

Here’s where things got interesting. 

DSM’s CEO Feike Sijbesma “had set up a ‘Hall of Failures’ where the company organized funerals for failed projects,” Carolyn Dewar, Scott Keller, and Vikram Malhotra write in CEO Excellence: The Six Mindsets That Distinguish the Best Leaders from the Rest.

“The … continue reading

“A great conversation is between two people who think the other is wrong.  A bad conversation is between those who think something is wrong with you.” -Micah Goodman, Professor at Hebrew University

1: The person sitting across from us is angry.  

We are debating a new marketing strategy.  At first, both of our intentions are clear.  We both want what’s best for the firm.

But as the conversation unfolds, a … continue reading

1: “Just as every object can be measured in length, width, and depth, every organization can be measured in terms of It, We, and I,” Fred Kofman writes in The Meaning Revolution: The Power of Transcendent Leadership.

We begin by imagining a company as a three-dimensional space.  We call the three dimensions “It,” “We,” and “I,”

The “It” dimension refers to the tasks, systems, and processes that make up … continue reading

1: The year was 2009.  Piyush Gupta had just been named CEO of DBS Group.

Piyush had a bold vision for DBS: To be the best bank in Asia.

The only problem?  DBS was considered “the worst bank in Singapore in terms of customer service quality,”  Carolyn Dewar, Scott Keller, and Vik Malhotra write in CEO Excellence: The Six Mindsets That Distinguish the Best Leaders from the … continue reading

1: Meet Nick.

He’s “a handsome, dark-haired man in his twenties,” Daniel Coyle writes in The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups.

Nick is sitting in a conference room in Seattle with three other people. “To outward appearances, he is an ordinary participant in an ordinary meeting,” Daniel notes. “This appearance, however, is deceiving. The other people in the room do not know it, but his mission … continue reading

1: As leaders, one of our most important roles is to unlock the full potential of each person on our teams.

One of the best ways to release this potential is to organize “Quality Circles,” Brian Tracy writes in his terrific book Sales Management.

This practice involves gathering our team for a specific one-hour time block each week to focus on a single question to drive “continuous and never-ending … continue reading

1: Our leadership team has gathered for our quarterly strategic planning meeting.  

We’ve done a check-in.  We’ve reviewed our annual goals for the year.  We’ve had a frank discussion about what’s working and what needs to change.  We’ve taken what we learned over the past quarter to come up with quarterly goals that will put us in a position to achieve our annual plan.

The next step is critical and perhaps unexpected.… continue reading

1: “Planning is 1 percent of the effort; execution is the other 99 percent,” write Mark Moses and his co-authors in Making Big Happen.

Once we’ve created our annual plan and communicated it across the company, our next task is critical: We must create a culture of accountability across the organization.

Which is what the Make Big Happen framework is all about.  “Before we adopted the Make Big Happen … continue reading