Pittsburgh-based Highmark Health generates some $19 billion in annual revenues and employs about 50,000 people across the nation. The healthcare company serves 50 million people in all 50 states. Highmark’s diversified portfolio includes businesses in health insurance, healthcare delivery, retail…
Leadership
Hiring the Way You Always Have Gets You More of What You Have
I was reading through a job description the other day that mentioned innovation 3+ times. However, as I read the description, I saw this: “Must have 5-7 years’ experience.” My thought was: Innovation or tenure — you tell me. Organizations…
Flatarchie, Holacracy and Virtual: 3 Emerging Business Structures That Might Work For You
With millennials now moving rapidly into management positions and the “fourth industrial revolution” just on the threshold, according to the World Economic Forum, traditional business practices and structures are under pressure to change like never before. But suddenly changing up…
Yesterday a Colleague, Today You’re the Boss. Now What?
“How do you handle it when you are now supervising your former teammates?” is one of the top five questions I get when teaching supervisory skills. This situation is understandably awkward for both the person who got promoted and those…
How to Gracefully Admit You’re Wrong
In a past organization, I routinely interacted with an employee who just couldn’t bring himself to admit being wrong about anything. No matter if we were dealing with misjudgment about how well a new hire might work out, about the…
The Total Cost of Your Workforce Is Not What You Think It Is
Do you have a detailed and accurate understanding of your total cost of workforce (TCOW)? If your organization is anything like most large businesses, the answer is no. Organizations are usually pushed to review their TCOW only when facing upheavals,…
The First Step to Great Leadership is Self-Awareness
“While I was waiting for my interview in a reception area, a pizza delivery man, a young guy dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, carried in a heavy pack of pizza boxes and water bottles. He struggled with the door….
You Can Help Managers Be Better Managers
Everyone is aware of friction when it exists in the office. Whether it’s an undercurrent you feel or scuttlebutt around the water cooler, you want to shout out why can’t we all just get along? Consider that your leadership may…
You Need the ‘Informal Leaders’ to Get Things Done
Everyone is familiar with the term C-suite. The C-suite is populated with the Chief Executive Officer, Chief Operating Officer, Chief Financial Officer… The list goes on and on. The people who inhabit the C-suite are the formal leaders of the…
How Change Agents Helped These Companies Transform Their Culture
Changing an organization’s culture is considered one of the most difficult challenges for leaders, and those with experience will confirm that it can be a massive undertaking. Whatever challenges the organization is facing — low morale among staff, bad behavior…
7 Ways to Make Your Project Fail and 7 Ways to Prevent That
Wonder why some projects fail while others are successful? Like the 7 deadly sins, this article from Toledo Solutions lists 7 of the most common ways to ensure a project fail — and they all come down to people and…
Want to Spark Innovation? Start by Changing How You Listen
With millions of messages bombarding us every day, the ability to listen is becoming a lost art. As leaders, we need to be able to hear what can move our businesses forward. After all, none of us is as smart…
Spicing Up the ‘Change Equation’ For Today’s Organization
Meaningful organizational change is the result of an optimum mix of several factors. Some of them are internal and largely controllable, whereas, others are external and primarily uncontrollable due to their susceptibility to outside influences. The desire to elevate an…
Narcissists Become Leaders. What Do You Do If You’re Not One?
Do you work closely with executives? If you do, you’ve probably run into a few surprising aspects to leadership that don’t get talked about much. For instance, what’s with the common occurrence of charming, good looking executives moving quickly up…
7 Culture Insights for Positive Change and 3 Reasons Change Fails
This post is a salute to passionate and experienced culture and performance change agents. You understand the power of culture in organizations and the challenge, frustration, restlessness, and exhilaration inevitably linked to intentional culture-related action. We’re living in the absolute…
5 Steps to Making Your Workforce Planning Strategic
HR leaders are often perceived by line managers and senior executives to deliver the most value when they are firefighting (a.k.a. dowsing “talent fires”). Quick HR fixes, like filling a vacancy with a pricey new hire or instantly meeting demands…
How HR Can Take the Lead In Succession Planning For a Small Organization
In general, when companies are looking to bring on new talent, they often promote the fact that there are opportunities for career growth within their company. In fact, according to a 2017 report by MRI Network, this is a quality…
How to Help Managers Develop Their Emotional Intelligence
Although it’s now widely accepted that emotional intelligence (EI) is vital for managers, people still tend to assume that two of the most fundamental EI competencies, self-awareness and empathy, are deeply ingrained and not amenable to change. The idea is…
Comp Guide for a Small Company: Why You Need a Salary Survey
Note: This is the second in a 4-part series on compensation practices for small companies. In this series Margaret O’Hanlon shows how a small company typically deals with compensation, discussing each of a few key practices and what problems these…
Analytics Can Play a Key Role In Career Planning Conversations
Careers used to progress linearly. You’d start at the bottom and climb up the rungs of a clearly defined ladder until you retired, but the world of work has changed so much. Many organizations don’t have defined career tracks anymore,…