Archive for May, 2009
Leadership Lessons Podcast: Amgen VP Kimball Hall May 4 2009 no responses
The latest Leadership Lessons podcast features the insights of Kimball Hall, a terrific young executive at Amgen, a Fortune 500 leader in biotechnology based human therapeutics. Kimball is the site manager for the 1,000 employee Amgen facility in Providence, RI where her team manufactures Enbrel, a treatment for rheumatoid arthritis.
In our conversation, Kimball talks about what she’s learned in making the transition from an individual contributor focused on microbiology to an executive with responsibility for a 24×7 operation manufacturing a critical product. In addition to her role within Amgen, Kimball serves on the boards of a number of statewide organizations supporting the economic development of Rhode Island. In our talk, she reflects on how her internal and external roles have shaped her as a leader.
In the interview, she shares her tips on:
- How she conducts “walk arounds” that allow everyone from managers to front line employees to take ownership for performance goals.
- How she shifted her focus from individual success metrics to organizational success metrics.
- How she built networks to make the transition from being a technical expert to an executive leader.
- How she created a plan for starting out strong in a new executive role.
- What she’s learned about confidence from being a statewide leader.
- How she’s created a learning organization at the Amgen Providence facility.
If you’re a leader who’s moving up, one who wants to move up or are supporting one who is moving up, you need to listen to Kimball Hall. Give a listen and let me know what your takeaways are.
Late Breaking Performance Improvement Research from Aristotle May 1 2009 2 responses
The French have this great line, “Tout est nouveau, vieux nouveau,” which more or less translates as “Everything old is new again.” A New York Times column called “Genius: The Modern View,” sort of proves the wisdom of that line. Brooks summarized the conclusions of two recent books, The Talent Code
The new research Brooks talks about is interesting but it essentially illustrates something Aristotle said over 2,000 years ago, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” If there’s one idea that informs the way I think about coaching and performance improvement, that’s it. What some of the newer books are adding to the Aristotelian guidance is more detail about how to put the core idea into practice. Brooks does a nice job of breaking the detail down into tangible steps:
Scott Eblin is an executive coach, speaker and author of 
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