What Do You Need of Me?

Mar 19, 2024 | Leadership Development

If your work world of late is similar to that of most of my clients’, you’re busy. You’re really busy. Most days, you’ve come to claim success if you can even start, much less finish, just one item on your ever-growing To Do List. More often than not, your days are a blur of one meeting, email, text, chat message, or call after another, asking or demanding something of you. Someone needs an answer. Something needs your approval. Someone expects you to handle a problem they can’t or don’t want...

Create a Better Work Environment – Redeploy Your Talent

Feb 22, 2022 | Leadership Development, Strategic Planning

I try to notice trends in what my clients are facing. Last week presented a trend I couldn’t help but notice: Three of my clients were tired, frustrated, and struggling to please customers’ shifting and very challenging demands. My clients weren’t happy. Their team members weren’t happy. Their customers weren’t happy. No matter what my clients tried to do to please their challenging customers, it wasn’t enough. My clients’ team members were burning out. Team members were starting to quit - and...

Why Are We Still Doing This?

Feb 18, 2020 | Strategic Planning

During a recent quarterly strategic plan update session, the CFO had an epiphany. We had been discussing what they, as the senior staff, had done to communicate their new vision and mission to all staff. We had also discussed what they would be doing next to work with their teams to help them understand how each team’s efforts should support the new vision. As part of that discussion, I suggested the senior staff ask themselves and their teams this question: How will this (process, initiative,...

Think Strategically – Ask Tough Questions

Jan 21, 2020 | Strategic Planning

One of the questions I’m initially asked by a new strategic planning client is, “How will we know what we’re supposed to focus on with our new plan?” Well, the easy answer is, “You’ll focus on what you need to focus on,” but the more appropriate answer is, “You’ll focus on what your answers to some critical questions tell you to focus on.” Now you may be thinking, “Those sound like a couple of non-answers and they don’t sound strategic at all.” In reality, my ‘appropriate’ answer is what...

Are Your Customers Outgrowing You?

Apr 16, 2019 | Strategic Planning

Hmmm. Another customer just selected a competitor for their next project. That’s the third time that’s happened this quarter. Like the others, you thought you’d worked well with the customer. So why didn’t this customer choose you again? It must be the new CFO that joined their company last year. She’s probably forcing them to use new vendors. She obviously doesn’t care about maintaining successful working relationships. It’s obvious she only cares about saving money and not the value of...