Category Archives: Leadership

Working with CEOs over the last dozen or so years, I observed several common traits in those who successfully grow their businesses. I have written in the past about the importance of having a vision, having the right people, and having strong execution. Another more subtle characteristic shared by successful […]

Some situations require a general to inspire us to “take the hill”. Some situations require someone from the group to lead, an informal leader. Some situations simply require wisdom; the wisdom of Socrates, to simply ask the right question. So easy to default to Option 1 and assume all situations require this. […]

Vistage economist, Alan Beaulieu, CEO of ITR, issued a simple warning in recent days “It’s been a good year, but there is a change coming,” he said. “Things are going to slow down.” For those of us who follow ITR, we know the recession Beaulieu expects next year is one that he’s […]

We worship winners—especially those who demonstrate leadership, confront a crisis and prevail. There’s nothing wrong with that, as long as the hero did not create the crisis in the first place. But what about those who keep crises from erupting at all? Who are the UNSUNG heroes working for you (and […]

Option 1 _ Sometimes, the best thing to do is to go with the flow and let things play out. Option 2 _ Sometimes, the best thing to do is to choose a desired outcome and lead others toward that outcome. How do you decide? In my experience, business owners have […]

We Vistage chairs often talk about the importance of staying curious, of asking questions. Often as leaders we tell ourselves that the only “cost” of being directive vs. asking questions are soft costs. For example, we make assumptions that are wrong and have to start over when we learn we are […]

How often are we in situations where what we want and what others want are not aligned? We make assumptions daily, mostly about other people. These assumptions enable us to take shortcuts and at the same time, they cause disagreement that perhaps wasn’t there to begin with. We assume a person […]

The Choice The intellect of man is forced to choose Perfection of the life, or of the work, And if it take the second must refuse A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark. When all that story’s finished, what’s the news? In luck or out the toil has left its […]

Care, Attention and Competency (CAC), these are the watchwords of the client service model for one of my Vistage member’s business. This business is in the construction industry and as he explains, bottom line of what they deliver is service, not construction. A couple of weeks ago I blogged about […]

For many years, the adage was “do you want it right, on-time or cheap, pick two”. And then somewhere in the 80’s and 90’s, perhaps associated with the dot.com era, marginal costs moved close to zero in some industries. Because of this, we began to expect all three. In fact the […]