Posts for tag: leadership

Top 5 Leadership Epic Fails

We’ve all made some bad decisions as leaders but hopefully never on the scale of these:

Failed to adapt – George Fisher led Kodak, the once dominant photography consumables business.  Despite Kodak having built a digital camera way back in 1975 he failed to anticipate the demise of traditional photography and led the business into a spiral that resulted in his successors filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.  Interestingly, closest rival Fuji read the writing on the wall and used their expertise to diversify into alternative sectors.

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Why 80% of Managers are in the Wrong Job

For many ambitious employees the addition of the word manager to their job title is a proud moment.  It conveys success, status and power.  And rightly so. Line managers have more influence on employee productivity, engagement and retention than pay, work place conditions and even senior mangement.

It’s therefore very concerning to discover that according to Gallup, 82% of those bearing the title aren’t up to the job!

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8 Daily Habits of Successful Leaders

If your inbox and meeting schedule is dominating your working life, here are some habits adopted by successful leaders that enable them to retain a fresh perspective and intellectual edge.

1. Get out in the field – Management by walking about tends to illicit far more accurate information than reports and spreadsheets.  …

3 Reasons Why Good People Will Quit in January

As we take time to rest and reflect over the Christmas holiday, it’s likely that some of your smartest colleagues will be making a new year resolution to switch jobs!

 

Here are the most common reasons why people might quit, and some ideas on how to keep hold of your talent:…

Trust your team… it’s blindingly obvious

Trust is a two way street, and developing trust within your team can be a key strategy to driving the business forward. 

We recently re-discovered this piece from the Times (March 3, 2005) about our blindfolded 4×4 driving course.  A perfect event for demonstrating and developing trust… and a lot of fun to boot….

Broken Leaders – How to spot them

An MBA at Harvard will set you back around $150k, at the end of which you’ll have a potentially good leader. Add to this ongoing training at upwards of £500 per day, the costs of selection, shadowing and a few failures and you should get a reasonable manager. Developing good leaders is a costly business.

It’s therefore somewhat ironic that while we’ve got better at creating this precious commodity of bright talent we often fail to notice when cracks appear….

An Invitation to Tea at the Ritz

During November, January and February we will be hosting a series of discussions over afternoon tea at some of the country’s finest hotels.

What better way to spend half a mid-week afternoon than informally discussing the emerging developments in your area of work, whilst enjoying delicious savouries and cakes….

The top five lessons team leaders can learn from bees

When it comes to working as a team, studies show that bees really are the best.  Here are our top five lessons we can apply to our own working lives.

1. Honest communication and sharing information is at the heart of the team.
Bees use vibrations and pheromones to help pass complex messages.  We have so much technology to help us communicate; let’s not forget that using it with honesty is they key to excellent communication.  …

Upbeat Conference Activity

Overcome the graveyard shift and inject some energy into your next meeting with one of our body percussion workshops.

In as little as 15 minutes our percussion experts can bring energy and rhythm to a conference, a great session opener or post lunch energiser.

Serious Business doesn’t take itself too Seriously

I spent two days of my summer holiday this year at Disneyland. Later in the trip we drove through Hollywood then past Google and Apple’s global headquarters.  It struck me that each of these mega industries was founded with fun in mind. And perhaps there’s more value to this distinctive founding feature than many CFOs have grasped.

When Walt built Disneyland he said “Disneyland is a work of love. We didn’t go into Disneyland just with the idea of making money.” …