More and more organizations are acknowledging that they have underestimated the value of middle managers. Research suggests that mid-level leaders might be the greatest determinant of the success of your organization. While top management sets the overall direction for an organization, according to Wharton management professor Ethan Mollick, middle managers play the most significant role “in
At a recent company meeting, one of the people on my team announced that she was “the most engaged at work” that she’s ever been. She’s worked on our team for several years, and this hasn’t been the easiest of them. Yet she is on fire. Imagine the impact her enthusiasm for work has on our
As I listened to a senior leader from a well-respected company review the findings of its latest employee survey, I wondered: Do people do this type of self-confrontation often enough—like, really dig into the brutal facts about themselves? Confronting your own weaknesses requires substantial humility, courage and insight. In the book Good to Great, Jim Collins
How much of what you urgently respond to is truly important for you to do? How much of what you’re neglecting is really the most important to get done? Your overall success may well hinge on how you answer these two questions. In 1967 Charles Hummel wrote a powerful essay about these two questions called
Jim leads an R&D team at a med tech firm. Medical products lay scattered across his desk. Like a child proudly showing his artwork, he provides a tour of each product in front of him. But this isn’t the tour he’s most excited about. “Can I give you a tour of our team?” We walk
Years ago, a colleague of mine, Harold Knutson, was faced with a difficult decision: support the company plan to outsource, or take a stand for his belief that it was a bad idea at that point in time. As one of a handful of vice presidents, he could have put his head down and gone
You don’t want to fall short of expectations. And you probably have to rely on other people to help you deliver on your expectations. If those people are different from you, they likely interpret standards and expectations differently. The bottom line: excellence requires consistent accountability for results, and fostering consistent accountability is challenging. A friend
A senior executive recently admitted to my brother-in-law that his organization was more focused on doing tasks than being customer-focused. My brother-in-law is a partner at a global management consulting firm, so he naturally set out to answer this question: How do organizations remain customer-focused amidst the continuous pressures on employees to get their work
Sometimes I experience what civil rights leader Howard Thurman meant when he said, “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” Like this morning, when I was working with a group of people on their influence skills,
We’ve all seen the PowerPoint, the plaque or the “About Us” page with feel-good concepts like Respect for Employees, Safety First, Concern for Customers or Be the Industry Leader. These typically come from well-intentioned leaders who want to document what the company stands for and where it’s going. Too often, though, those words become corporate
Matt Norman is president of Norman & Associates, which offers Dale Carnegie Training in the North Central US. Dale Carnegie Training is a global organization ...READ MORE