Boards govern, management teams lead. That's what Nancy Falls told me when we talked recently about her new book, "Corporate Concinnity in the Boardroom: 10 Imperatives to Drive High Performance Companies." It makes sense that boards and management teams should do different things. But where does corporate governance end and leading the company begin? According […]
All Posts, Expert Interview, Leadership, Strategy, Team Management
Justin Rosenstein, the co-founder of collaboration software company Asana, wondered, "Why do some teams march in unison and achieve big dreams, while others waste time, get stressed and lose steam? I've found that the answer is clarity." His first requirement is clarity of purpose. Abundant literature and research confirms the immediate need for clarity of […]
What’s the difference between managers and leaders? It’s one of those questions you might expect to answer if you’re sitting an end-of-year business-studies exam in high school. I’m sure I had to do an assignment at college on this very subject. I probably wrote about how a manager is an organizer, who makes day-to-day decisions […]
Stop and think about some of the incredible innovations we rely on today. Most of these products were invented decades ago and are now such a part of our society that we don't even think about the innovation behind them. But we'd find it hard to function without them. For instance, consider electronic communication. Before […]
Since leaving my job as a news reporter for Thomson Reuters and going freelance some years ago, I've had to come to terms with failure like never before. Pitching articles to magazines and newspapers can be tough. Sometimes I get a great response but, other times, my emails are met with radio silence or a […]
It's not often I find myself unable to put down a business book. But this was recently the case with "The Objective Leader," by Elizabeth Thornton, which starts with the gripping story of how the author raised and then lost a million dollars on a fruit-juice importing venture. That was 20 years ago, when Thornton […]
All Posts, Career Skills, Leadership, Strategy, Team Management
I've never been a leader of an organization and I've always shied away from management roles in my journalism career, preferring to stay "at the coal face." Nor have I ever been overly interested in management theory or the structure of organizations. But I am really interested in concepts like purpose and meaning, in the […]
All Posts, Career Skills, Leadership, Team Management, Time Management
Motivation is the art of finding out what "makes people tick," and applying that to get the best from them. As such, it’s something that we all need to understand. There are many great models that help us do this. One of the fathers of motivation, Frederick Herzberg, said that the way to motivate people […]
I met Bill McDermott on a fine autumn day in London. He had a packed schedule for his one day in town, and I got the first slot: 7:45am at the Four Seasons hotel in the Canary Wharf business district. It felt a little bit like a Hollywood publicity drive, when actors are parked in […]
Do you remember when you first started using Facebook and Twitter? Most likely, you used social media to stay in touch with your family and friends. But did you ever imagine that businesses would soon be using it to communicate directly with their customers? Technology is changing so fast, it can be hard to keep […]
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