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…
Leadership
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,…
What Toys R Us Teaches Us About Leadership Cultivation
The demise of Toys R Us — the toy store that captivated every elementary schoolkid’s daydreams — was ultimately just another illustration of management gone wrong. It can be easy to point fingers at big box and online competitors as…
How to Avoid These 3 Culture Change Pitfalls
Culture change is a human experience. It’s not just a business imperative, as it has been viewed for decades, as reflected in these expressions: “If we’re going to grow, we have to change the culture” and “This culture is toxic,…
Competence Isn’t Enough. You Need Champions and Maybe a Little Narcissism
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…
We Want Disruption Until It’s Us Being Disrupted
“So many of us in business (say) ‘I want innovation. I want disruption. I want the next big thing’,” said Bradley West to his DisruptHR audience in Winnipeg last year. But “Stop changing my process,” he added mockingly. The message…
Futureproof Your Organization by Hiring From Within
The war for talent is heating up this summer with the recent news that there are more job openings than unemployed job seekers. In many ways, it’s a job seeker’s market. This is not only putting more pressure on employers…
What Every HR Manager Needs to Know About Succession Planning
The only thing constant is change. Even in the world of business, where we try to eliminate as many independent, unknown variables as possible, nothing is set in stone. Succession planning is the best way to prepare for the eventuality…
The 21st Century Way to Getting Your People to Do Great Work
Leading is like parenting — everybody thinks they do a much better job than they actually do. There’s a definite gap between how most executives assess themselves and how their direct reports do. Leaders and their teams seem to be watching two…
Put Away the Phone. Leave the Office and Start Meeting the People Who Do the Work
Note: The following is an excerpt from the author’s new book, When Leadership Improves, Everyone Wins. Realize that as leaders, we are signal senders. What signal does it send to our people when we stay on the executive floor or…
Great Leaders Know When to Ask for Help and How to Do It
Do you ask for help when you need it? Do you wait until the very last minute? Would you prefer to suffer and go it alone rather than reach out to others for an assist? Does your perfectionism masquerade as…