Category Archives: Strategy

This is the time of the year that most companies begin their strategic planning process. While it’s fun to host and participate in an offsite, the end result sadly is often put on a shelf until next year. Mostly the plan is a continuation of the last one, and mostly […]

What does this statement even mean? Diverse leadership teams are hard…they are harder to build, are unlikely to come to consensus and are more likely to have conflict. So, why bother? Because… they are harder to build, are unlikely to come to consensus and are more likely to have conflict, […]

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 […]

Quiet time, a luxury or a necessity? Call it meditation or simply call it quiet time. Taking time to clear the mind, we are told by our spiritual leaders, is the secret to awareness and peace. For years, perhaps centuries, we humans go to mediation classes, yogis, ashrams, the Dalai Lama, […]

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 […]

A few weeks ago, I posted the following as the leadership quote for the month of March: “Decide democratically, implement dictatorially.” —Peter Schutz, CEO of Porsche 1981-1986 One of my readers replied with the following comment: “Schutz got the first part of that quote right. I however believe you implement collaboratively.” […]