27

Jan

Are you too busy to be curious?

0 No comments

jeff

busy, creativity, curiosity, execution, Innovation, overworked, planning, strategy, team dynamics

About teams, Be a better team leader, Be a better team member, Contribute, Strategy & Planning

If you want to be strategic, you need to be curious, but execution mode reduces creativity. Here’s how to get into the right mode to be strategic and innovative.

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11

Feb

The #1 Crisis Facing Organizations: The Need for More Conflict

8 comments

3coze

conflict, Galbraith, laterals, matrix organization, priorities, prioritization, star model, strategy, structure, SWOT

About teams, conflict, Horror Stories, Strategy & Planning

I’m deep into writing my new book and I’ve had an epiphany: Organizations are built to require conflict while employees are built to avoid it. I see this impact of this problem every day, but it took me 20 years to name it. Now it’s so clear. We have set up a fundamental tension between […]

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29

Oct

Is your team conflict avoidant?

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3coze

conflict avoidance, contentious decisions, facilitation, passive-aggressive, strategic planning, strategy

About teams, Be a better team leader, Be a better team member, conflict, Exercises, How to fix teams, Right Words to Say, Strategy & Planning

Does your team have a “too hard pile?” Is there a list of issues that everyone knows need to be addressed for your business to evolve, but there is tactic agreement that they would be so uncomfortable, so messy to discuss that you just work around them? That’s what happened to a team of doctors […]

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04

Dec

The Echo Chamber

2 comments

3coze

disruptors, echo chamber, risk, strategic planning, strategy, validation

About teams, Be a better team leader, Contribute, How to fix teams, Strategy & Planning

There were many things to learn from the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. One of the lessons that has considerable application to the workplace is the risk of living in an echo chamber. The term “echo chamber” was used to describe the propensity of voters to surround themselves with messages that were consistent with what they […]

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26

Oct

Why it’s hard to lead when times are good

5 comments

3coze

competition, Crisis, disruption, disruptor, innovator's dilemma, leadership, management, strategy

About teams, Bad Leaders, Be a better team leader, Strategy & Planning

“We’re lucky. Times are good and it’s pretty easy to manage right now.” This is a quote from a member of an executive team I’m working with right now. He’s right, times are good for their business…really good. He’s also right that the steady sales and recurring competitive wins make it reasonably easy to manage […]

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19

Oct

Are you failing as a leader?

4 comments

3coze

bad leaders, goals, incompetent leaders, leadership, micro-management, priorities, strategy, thresholds, trade offs

Bad Leaders, Be a better team leader, Contribute, Horror Stories

Somehow, we’ve ended up with very few leaders in our organizations and a whole heck of a lot of very highly paid individual contributors. I’m getting pretty frustrated by this. I know immediately that it’s a problem in an organization when the CEO starts talking about upward delegation and a lack of accountability, even from […]

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09

Oct

Fast or agile: Which are you really looking for?

4 comments

3coze

agile, agility, competition, decision making, disruption, execution, implementation, sense of urgency, Speed, strategy

About teams, Be a better team leader, Contribute, How to fix teams, Strategy & Planning

I was listening while a group of executives spoke about how to make their organization more agile. What was interesting, was that most of their comments referred to the speed they needed to move, rather than to their agility. I think it’s important to understand the difference between speed and agility because they serve different […]

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25

Jun

Strategy execution needs to be more inclusive

3 comments

3coze

execution, goal setting, Objectives, PMO, programs, projects, strategic planning, strategy

About teams, Be a better team member, Contribute, Strategy & Planning

Facilitating executive teams as they develop their business strategies is one of my favorite things to do.  I love learning about shifting dynamics in individual industries and about macro-trends that cut across all industries. I get charged up when a client connects the dots and sees a unique opportunity to create competitive advantage. I get […]

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20

Apr

Make work projects

2 comments

3coze

cascade, execution, focus, lone wolf, over-worked, priorities, prioritization, strategy

Be a better team leader, Communicate, Contribute, How to fix teams, Right Words to Say

“We’re smart people, we kick off a lot of ideas.” This was a quote from a participant in the Cascading Strategy workshop we delivered last week. We were in the midst of a discussion about clearing out some low value work to make room for the new strategic priorities when this SVP admitted that he […]

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29

Oct

Running a great strategic meeting

4 comments

3coze

agenda, brainstorming, external environment, meeting, offsite, pre-read, strategy, strategy development

Uncategorized

You spend a huge amount of time in meetings; make it time well spent. I’m in the midst of a series on better meetings. I started with how to split different topics into weekly, monthly, and quarterly meetings. Then I dove in with detailed instructions on running great weekly and monthly meetings. Today, I’m onto the quarterly meetings—what I call […]

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