Deadline-Driven: Building Teams That Do Whatever It Takes

Is your team “doing its best” (whatever that means) or “doing whatever it takes”? The difference between a good team and a great team is very often a “sense of urgency”. And how can you tell which type of team you are? Deadlines. Good teams set deadlines. Great teams meet them. Great teams love deadlines. […]

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Lead Happy: The First Commandment for Leaders

The first commandment of any leader is to: “Make yourself happy”. An unhappy leader may still be effective but their impact on others is less than ideal. It’s impossible for them to lead with humour, enthusiasm or optimism. Note, I’m not asking you to “be happy”, I’m calling on you to “make yourself happy”. Happiness […]

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Stir the Pot: Leading Beyond Comfort to Drive Elite Performance

A leader’s role is to gently stir the pot when too many morsels have settled at the bottom. In other words, leaders need to disturb the comfortable. The comfortable soon become complacent – and complacency is but an earlier death when it comes to a high-performing business. This is why – after being an early […]

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Bold Visions Aren’t Born in Committees

Bold visions are rarely the stuff of committees. Committees are creatures of consensus, they are good at avoiding mistakes. The larger they get, the more conservative they become. Bold visions spring from the inspirations of an individual mind. Dr Martin Luther King did not say: “We have a dream”. That would be a group hallucination. […]

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Great Visions Always Spark Opposition

What’s the first thing you can bank on when you articulate a clear, bold, optimistic vision? Controversy and opposition. Most people fear and resent change. Just ask Gustave Eiffel. Before it became a much-beloved international icon and the definitive architectural masterpiece of the 19th Century, the Eiffel Tower was fiercely opposed. It was variously called […]

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