Jack Welch said, “An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the greatest competitive advantage.” Continuous learning and its respective implementation to generate desired business outcomes is at the core of successful organizations. Peter Senge defined a learning organization as the one “where people continually expand their capacity to create

In my last blog I shared with you a true story of two employees in conflict and the actual intervention made by their supervisor.  In a nutshell, that intervention consisted of the supervisor bringing the two employees together and saying to them, “Okay ladies, go kick and scratch each other’s eyes out and get this over with.”

A government employee (A) wrote me recently stating that she has been in a conflict with her coworker (B) for about a month now.  I say “conflict,” but according to (A), it was nothing more than a minor misunderstanding…at least at first.  Once the problem emerged, (A) noticed that (B) was upset and immediately apologized,

It’s not always easy to be a great leader. While some personality traits naturally bring strong people to the forefront of organizations, leadership skills are a learned quality that must be developed over time and through an abundance of practice. Title or job description does not automatically indicate a person’s leadership abilities. A true leader moves people

Lately, I’ve been hearing the same message from a lot of smart people. It’s a simple one, one you’ve likely heard before (of course you have.) It’s about reading to learn. John Spence, who we featured here as a guest blogger, credits much of his success to the knowledge he gains from reading a couple

With the economic turmoil that started a little over two years ago, coupled with the Madoff scheme, it made me wonder why it happened in the first place and how it could have been avoided.   I often wonder how the C level executives and leaders across those enterprises that caused these problems can sleep at

I believe strongly that leaders and leaders-of-leaders (and quite a few of us consultants) are not clear enough with leaders about what we expect of them! We too often confuse leaders by asking them to do MANY THINGS: set the vision, clarify strategy, define valued behaviors, set goals, meet one-on-one, listen, embrace followers’ great ideas,

Last week, I met Kevin for an event with Authentic Leadership Cincinnati. I came home with a box of books, all related to topics that I want to learn about to be more effective in my work. We can seek to develop others in many ways, even simple ways, the way Kevin is seeking to

When Susan left graduate school, clutching her MBA, she set her sights on one big company to work for. She got there on her second job. That’s the way Susan is. Susan is very bright, very focused, and very hard working. Her bonuses and promotions among the individual contributor ranks reflected that. When her boss