so your vision is never lost.

LEADERSHIP INSIGHTS

 
Preserving Your Organizational Culture During Company Growth
I’d been a dedicated customer of a local food company from the day they opened. Lily had started out as a small-scale gardener and baker, selling her vegetables and sweetbreads at area farmers’ markets. That’s where I discovered her, and I made her table a regular stop on my Saturday morning rounds. As demand grew, she hired a few friends to help her expand her garden and bakery. After a few years, she had requests from local restaurants, a regular […]
Turning Around a Corporate Culture of Complaints Before It Entirely Kills the Company
My first work experience after graduation was in a departmental office at my university. In most ways, it was a pretty nice job. The pay and benefits were good, the work was interesting, and most of my coworkers were nice people. There were only two problems: Rick and Martha. Our office only had 10 people, and these two were bringing it down. Their main hobbies were griping and complaining. Whenever a new project came up, they fretted and revisited things […]
Take Time to Assess the Quality of Your Business Meetings
  Meetings can be a powerful tool for your business. If poorly run however, they can be a tremendous waste of time and energy and actually cause more harm than good. There are a few key elements that every meeting should contain to make them worthwhile. As a leader, one of your biggest jobs is to ensure information exchange. Meetings are a huge part of that task. We encourage you to take a closer look at the quality of your […]
Deftly Dealing with Criticism and Activism Toward Your Company in a New Community
I used to live in a small town with a fairly depressed economy. Over the previous two decades, they’d lost the farm machinery plant, the appliance plant, and the industrial restaurant equipment plant. Good jobs were hard to come by, people were hurting, and most young people left town as soon as they turned eighteen.   When a new plant announced it was moving to town, you might have expected the local community to be overjoyed. After all, it was […]
Relying on a Personality Test in the Executive Hiring Process Is Like Following Your GPS Off a Bridge
I’ve been a customer of the same local farm and orchard for nearly 20 years. I go to Gatwood’s for the excellent produce, the great prices, and the incredible donuts. Those things never change. However, over the last ten years, Joe Gatwood, who took over the farm when his dad retired, has made some pretty big changes. An entrepreneur by nature, Joe has expanded the selection and opened orchard stores in several of the surrounding towns. He’s made deals with […]
Spotting and Hiring an Employee for Team Fit Is About Looking Beyond Personality
My friend Liz was worried about the future of her workplace. She was on the Quality Management Team at Gaskets, Inc. (not its real name), and the CEO wanted to expand the team. “We get along really well right now,” she explained. “We laugh a lot, we go out after work, and we don’t bother each other. We focus on our own projects and still get to socialize. It’s great!” “So why are you worried?” I asked. “It sounds like […]
Google and Yale Study Shows Experientially Diverse Teams Yield Productive Chaos
When we think of efficiency, we tend to picture something mechanical like a train–a well-tuned system that chugs along, each part working in unison, creating a beast of unusual power. And it is true that trains are very efficient, which is why when we create teams in our companies, we try to craft the most efficient possible group. Lots of time and money is spent figuring out which teams would have the smoothest dynamic. It turns out, though, that in […]
Dean Smith Shows Why Inclusive Leadership of Diverse Teams Fosters Creativity and Flexibility
Dean Smith began his long and historic coaching career at the University of North Carolina in 1961, at the tender age of 30, but already with a long history of compassion and inclusion behind him. As a high schooler in rural Kansas in the late 1940s, he pushed his school to integrate the basketball program, which at the time had separate teams for black and white players. He kept that activism up at UNC, where he signed the first African-American […]
Introverts in Your Logistics Team: How to Improve Teamship and Communication Skills
A local logistics company had hired a great team of very qualified drivers, engineers, and managers, but they had a problem, and that problem’s name was Dave. Dave was great at planning. He had the math skills of a rocket scientist. He could figure out routes, costs, weights and savings better than anyone else on staff. Dave spotted inefficiencies the way most people spot a twenty-dollar bill on the sidewalk. His face would light up as if he had found […]