Last month, a longstanding client brought me in after reviewing some recent customer research. The company provides a relatively complex service, and one of their most common and unprompted customer complaints was that the company’s... Continue reading
Last week I facilitated a senior staff meeting that focused on silo-busting and improving cross-departmental collaboration. The group leader wrote to me afterwards to say he was very happy with how things went, and asked... Continue reading
Working with teams or leaders in conflict is a crucial part of many of my assignments -- even when it was not included in the original scope of work. Sometimes these disagreements arise because individual... Continue reading
“Why is no one ever held accountable here?” A vice president was fuming at me, and not for the first time. “Why do we always act like everything’s fine instead of holding people accountable?” I’ve... Continue reading
I’m very lucky to experience much less disagreement or outright conflict on the job than most people. Although my clients’ views may differ from mine in many ways, it’s implicit in our relationship that we’re... Continue reading
When I suggested 6 Books to Make You Feel New and Improved in 2017 -- to be consumed at the rate of one book every other month -- readers responded so well that I’m recommending... Continue reading
When leaders make decisions skillfully, everyone on the team wins. But when leaders are poor decision-makers, the team’s performance and culture suffer, and individual team members can lose confidence and become disengaged. Unfortunately, though, team... Continue reading
I just heard from a middle manager who vented about her senior leaders’ lack of response after she made them aware of certain problems. She wondered if there were better ways to explain challenging circumstances... Continue reading
In the Harvard Business Review article “How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics,” Jay Parikh, Facebook’s global head of engineering and infrastructure, advises against hiring “empire builders, self-servers, and whiners” -- even if they’re also... Continue reading
In business, as in politics, I’ve watched many decision-makers accept simplistic solutions, seduced by promises that, based on either evidence or logic, aren't at all likely to turn out nearly as well as they sound.... Continue reading
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