Posts Tagged ‘ Leadership ’

Adversity: It’s Not Whether It Will Happen But How You React That Counts

February 3, 2012

At some time you’re going to face serious adversity. Maybe you already have. Your crisis may be an internal or external one, but it will come. The more extensive your leadership reach, the more likely you are to face these situations. The impact can be disastrous for your business and for you personally. Just ask executives at Toyota or BP. Once you’re there, the only thing that matters is your ability to navigate through the storm. While each situation is unique, and there is no prescriptive formula for success, you’ve got to carefully manage these five things or you...

So, will culture help me grow my business?

January 23, 2012

By David M. Kasprzak

So, will culture help me grow my business?

All business is, to one degree or another, a volume business. The size of a business is determined by its revenues. While nearly every improvement school focuses on lowering costs – do they help to increase revenue? Most businesses will live within a certain margin that is reasonable within the company’s industry. True growth, however, occurs by selling more and increasing the volume of dollars flowing in. So, how can a business see the impact of adopting progressive cultural experiments on total, overall dollars at its disposal? If you had asked me up until a...

You can’t bloviate your way to an improved workplace

January 10, 2012

By David M. Kasprzak

You can’t bloviate your way to an improved workplace

I think we’ve all encountered the senior manager who has been assigned to “fix” a dysfunctional chunk of the organization. Typically, they come in with a great many ideas, usually born from experiences in other situations, and then they begin to implement the tools that worked elsewhere. There’s often a short period of enthusiasm, if not grudging acceptance, but things tend to slip backwards in time and, eventually, the organization returns to a state very similar to where it began. The problems that the person was facing never really went away, and the attempts at treatment proved to be...

Shattering the rules: The too hard pile

January 4, 2012

By David M. Kasprzak

It is because of fear that we look at change as being too hard. We believe the obstacles insurmountable. The deck is stacked against us, or maybe we just don’t know how – so we fear looking foolish if we fail. So we don’t try. We throw things on the Too Hard pile and forget about them. We throw them there, so we don’t try and we just accept. We accept until we start to believe things are this way for a reason. We believe long enough to start to defend it,...

Typical Recruiting: The first step to the last straw

January 3, 2012

By David M. Kasprzak

Typical Recruiting: The first step to the last straw

From time to time I am contacted by recruiters, usually third-party folks who are looking to gain a commission, and once in a while I get a message from an in-house recruiter who has found my resume on monster.com or LinkedIn. The typical introduction, whether by phone or email, tends to go something like: Hello, I am ___________, a senior recruiter with ___________. I have a position I think you are a perfect fit for. Please forward me your resume and I’ll give you more details about the position. Now, all of that sounds normal, right? It’s...

Getting Results: Starting with Why

January 2, 2012

By David M. Kasprzak

After a long Holiday break – I’m back! I hadn’t planned on letting the blog go for the Holidays, but a lot of good time spent around the house, catching up on unfinished projects and just spending time with the kids, was worth it. On to 2012….. If people are just tools, then any seemingly appropriate tool can be inserted into a process, and the process will run – more or less. (Yes, you can turn screws with a hammer. It’s not the best way – for either the screw or the hammer – but it can be done, even if...

Understanding that Results are an absolute

December 21, 2011

By David M. Kasprzak

Understanding that Results are an absolute

As I continue to contemplate the machinations of the Results-Only Work Environment (ROWE), I've had a few conversations recently with people who are trying to understand how ROWE works. While I am far fom an expert, I have come up with a few things in order to share my understanding.

Change exposes the boss, so there is no change

December 13, 2011

By David M. Kasprzak

It's no wonder that those in power resist transparency or programs that put a spotlight on their knowledge base. By doing "what the boss wants" as a means of getting promoted, these folks never developed a strong enough knowledge base to fully understand the position. Of course, no one would want to put that on display. The end result is fear - fear, on the boss's part, that he or she will be exposed for having little to no knowledge of what in the hell it is their staffs do all day.

Less Dad, more Grandpa

December 12, 2011

By David M. Kasprzak

Several times, I have heard people say that we need to get rid of the paternalistic, parenting relationships at work and gravitate more towards relationships based on patience, trust and mentoring. Every time I hear that sentiment, I get a shiver up my Dad spine, because it tends to reflect a lot of things about parenting that are, however unfortunate, full of grains of truth. Dads are expected to be authoritative. Their decisions are non-negotiable. They never show pain or fear. They have answers even when they don’t. Oh, and the last thing you ever want to do is piss...

Scholtes: The workplace visionary no one’s heard of

November 29, 2011

By David M. Kasprzak

In recent years, we've seen some thought leaders offer up best selling books, visionary programs and torrents of articles and other works describing what is wrong, how to fix it, and attempting to explain the science behind their approaches. In particular, Dan Pink gave us Drive, Best Buy gave us the ROWE experiment, and Lean thinkers continue to encourage us to think of front-line emplyees first, as in Jim Womack's Gemba Walk. What I find interesting is that all of these approaches to improving the workplace, at least in part, have some basis in Peter Scholtes 1998 Book, The...

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Posts Tagged ‘ Leadership ’

Adversity: It’s Not Whether It Will Happen But How You React That Counts

So, will culture help me grow my business?

You can’t bloviate your way to an improved workplace

Shattering the rules: The too hard pile

Typical Recruiting: The first step to the last straw

Getting Results: Starting with Why

Understanding that Results are an absolute

Change exposes the boss, so there is no change

Less Dad, more Grandpa

Scholtes: The workplace visionary no one’s heard of

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