A huge amount has been written over the years about leadership and yet we still seem to be pretty poor at it. It is my belief that one of the main reasons for this is that whilst you can go on lots of courses on how to lead others and…
In organisations there can be case for managers and even executives but that case is rare and usually poor. What are required by most organisations are leaders and “doers”. It would great if everyone was a leader, but whilst anyone can be a leader, not everyone wants to be a…
As part of my job I do a great deal of training. One thing I am increasingly noticing is that often so called “leaders” send their teams on courses but say that they are too busy (important). They forget that effective leaders need to learn. Anyone who says they are…
We have / are all guilty of it. The six and seven day working week, the 50, 60, 70 or more hour week. The funny thing is that if you ask almost anyone to describe to you the Law Of Diminishing Returns they will be able to do it. The…
Work from home has exposed a huge problem that has been sitting in so many organisations like a ticking time bomb for so long. That of poor management and even worse leadership. We have seen a large number of high profile organisations (you know who you are) with “leaders” and…
One of the mistakes so many leadership courses make is that they teach how to lead others but forget that effective leaders start with themselves. If you can’t lead yourself then you stand no chance leading others. One of the founders of VISA, Dee Hock is famous for saying “if…
The trouble with so many “leaders” is that they are so busy trying to lead others that they forget to lead themselves. The founder of VISA Dee Hock has stated that if you want to be a leader then you should invest at least 40% of your time in leading…
Targets without an objective can never be effective. A target a something that, if achieved moves us toward our objective. If we do not know what the objective is then we cannot produce targets. The problem is that many organisations give out targets without making the objective clear and that’s…
In order to understand why managers are not effective but leaders are, we need to understand the difference. Management is about productivity and efficiency. Leadership is about effectiveness. The problem for managers is that the problems of efficiency and productivity have been solved. We have all the techniques, Lean, Prince,…
When a child starts to walk or draws a picture good parents reward their efforts with praise and encouragement. The same applies when they speak their first words or sing their first song. More praise is heaped upon. This despite the fact that when taking their first steps they will…