On November 20th, in wind gusts up to 45 mph, we finished the Philadelphia Marathon. All five of us. Our times ranged from 4 hours 21 minutes to 4 hours 55 minutes, but we all crossed the finish line with a smile. In taking the journey this fall through the parallels drawn from running and leading well, it really all boils down to these few things: 1. Have a meaningful goal and motivation towards that goal. 2. Have a plan to meet that goal; chunk your tasks into manageable pieces to achieve the goal. 3. There is no elevator to success; you have
Innovation is a buzzword in business now. In a fast-paced world where change and adapting is necessary in order to survive in business, innovation seems to be what all people want to point to that keeps companies alive. “Innovate or die” we hear. But is it worth all the hype? Despite the fact that I often hate cliché words or phrases (don’t ask me about what I think about the word “synergy”, for example), I’m on the innovation bandwagon. I believe in today’s business world it truly is what separates the winners from the losers. And you can see why
By Kris Dunn It’s one of the unwritten rules of management. It’s also one of the hardest things for new managers to wrap their heads around. “It’s not your fault, but it’s your problem.” Let’s deconstruct that a bit. New managers were often very high performing individual contributors (ICs). The great thing about being an IC is that you only have to worry about one person – and that person is you. But your performance as an IC convinced us that you’d make a good manager of people. For the most part that’s true. One point that sneaks up on
By guest blogger: Scott Mayo Schools love to measure things. With accountability being the buzzword in educational circles, measurement has become an even greater priority. However, we often fall trap to measuring things that are easy to measure, not because they are the most important things. Leadership is one of those important things – we all want it – that has been notoriously hard to quantify. How do I know that I have a teacher who is a leader? Kris Dunn, HR professional and blogger, has suggested we consider the ideas of Leadership Gravity and Leadership Birth Rate to
“The culture of any organization is shaped by the worst behavior the leader is willing to tolerate.” What departments and/or managers do people in your company clamor to get into? What drives this clamor? I’ve seen it before. No one wants to work in finance, but everyone wants to be in marketing. Or everyone is trying to figure out a way to work for manager A instead of having to report to manager B. What is driving the popularity of the department or the person, and should we pay attention to it? Is the number of people who want to