New “Best Companies to Work For” List Revealed

Last night, @AlanSMurray and the Fortune Magazine editors and journalists revealed for the twentieth time their annually curated list of the “100 Best Companies to Work For in America.”  The list is special to me, for two reasons. First, my most significant employment experience prior to branching out on my own was at an early stage FedEx. Our HR […]

Career Advice from 6 Prominent Female Executives

Today, in celebration of International Women’s Day, we’re going to do one thing that guys like us should do more often… Shut up and listen. To wit, here’s a link to a very good piece written by Grace Nasri for FastCompany – Six Female Execs On The Early Career Advice They Wish They’d Gotten. Enjoy!

Good Leaders Look Beneath the Surface

One of the most remarkable people I ever worked with was a bank teller named Donna, at a bank branch I managed early in my career. Donna was a customer magnet. Brilliant. Hard working. Always went the extra mile. She was a single mother, and she’d been a teller for 12 years. I recommended to […]

When it comes to Training, Visibility Matters

I was conducting leadership training for a large public utility, in a rural training facility about 100 miles from the company’s headquarters. The Vice President who had brought me in was a full participant in the first class I conducted, and believe me, his presence and participation in the training wasn’t lost on anyone. A […]

Three Steps to being the Leader you Always Wanted to Be

Along the way, we’ve all observed and noted better (I hesitate to use the word, “best”) habits practiced by leaders we have come into contact with. I’m willing to bet that most of those habits are simple, straightforward, and have a high degree of commonality from one person to another. Here are three that stand […]

How to Avoid Cow Tipping at Work

Urban mythology has it that teenagers, likely fueled by alcohol have, in the pursuit of fun, been known to enter a pasture, sneak up on a grazing cow and, through brute force upend the animal, pushing (aka “tipping”) it onto its side. Rural mythology, however, aided by people who have actually touched a cow with something besides […]

Why Stars Sometimes Fail as Leaders

A bright and promising software engineer, we’ll call him Jay, had made a real mark on his company, developing and innovating some of the most important products and processes in the organization’s portfolio. One Friday, Jay’s boss called him into his office and told him,  “You’re so good at what you do that we’ve decided […]

Discretionary Effort…When the Show Must Go On

This past Sunday morning at 8:30, a leader named Ashley learned that a key member of her team had called in sick – totally legit –  quarantined with the flu, and would therefore not be at work that day for her 2:00 shift. Not good.  OK, you say, people call in sick all the time. […]

Don’t Overwork Your Horses

New supervisors quickly learn that it’s to their advantage to know at all times who the most willing and productive people are on their team, who the ‘work horses’ are. These are the people with seemingly endless capacity to reach for and find another gear, and crunch their way thru whatever pile of work is […]

The Vision Thing…Passengers or Crew

Adapted from Contented Cows STILL Give Better Milk “It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that in an environment where there is a shared vision of excellence…where people can be the best they can be on a daily basis…where, when they know what is expected of them…understand that reward is linked to performance…and BELIEVE they […]