I’m a huge believer in succession planning. But so often, it doesn’t work.
Even when a company talks about succession planning, when there is a big job to be filled, the company goes outside.
I find it interesting is that many companies do one of two extremes when it comes to succession planning:
Often when I talk to people who aspire to become a general manager they will tell me that they are striving to get experience in every function to prepare themselves.
This is a mistake that I refer to collecting all the cards…
I’ll get experience in Marketing, and Product Development, and Supply Chain Management and Customer Service, and on and on…then I’ll be ready and qualified to become a General Manager or CEO. Read More “Avoid this mistake if you want to reach the executive level sooner”
As a manger, particularly as a CEO or general manger, sometimes you are going to be in the position of leading a group whose function you have no experience in, and frankly, don’t have a clue about! Read More “How to lead a team when you don't understand their work”
If you want to positively impact the bottom line in your business, insist that all your managers are good managers.
Read More “Simple Test: Are you a good manager?”Bad managers wreak havoc. Bad managers cost growth and profit.
For years I have been trying to figure out why so many leaders tolerate poor execution and do nothing about it.
One unfortunate issue I see quite regularly is simply that some “big” executives seem to believe that execution is beneath them. Read More “Execution is not beneath you”
People often ask me if it was hard for me to go from running really large organizations to having my own (implied — “much smaller”) company.
This was never an issue for me because I always maintained a psychological distance between the power of my role, (managing a $1B+ global business, multi-hundred-milion dollar budget, and thousands of people) and my own personal power. Read More “Imagined power vs. Real power and respect”
One time when I was running a large organization at HP, I asked my financial analyst partner, “What is the current headcount in my organization?”
He said “How accurate an answer do you need?”
I said, “What do you mean?”. Read More “The hidden cost of asking a question”
Last week I wrote about the importance of information sharing across an organization. If you missed it it’s a very important idea.
This week I want to share one more example, specifically about an executive’s responsibility to share information with the team — and the value of doing so. Read More “What your employees need to hear from you”
Late last year, I had a big AHA I want to share with you.
Here’s where it came from…
When I do strategy execution work with executive teams, I typically begin with an assessment phase where I talk with people across the organization at multiple levels. Read More “A key way to reduce business risk that many leaders miss”
The first time I held a general management role I had a mentor share something with me I found to be pretty life changing.
He said, “You need to worry about WHO and WHY. Read More “The 2 most important decisions an executive can make”
