Archive for September, 2010
Join Me for a Conversation on Leading at the Next Level September 30 2010 no responses
I hope you and your colleagues will join me for a complimentary tele-seminar on Leading at the Next Level on Thursday, October 14 at 2:00 pm ET. It’s co-sponsored by the good folks at SmartBrief on Leadership. You can sign up for the conversation here. Here’s the scoop on what we’ll cover.
About the Leading at the Next Level Tele-seminar
Based on the research behind the second edition of my book, The Next Level: What Insiders Know About Executive Success, I’ll share the highlights of a field tested roadmap of what high performing leaders pick up and let go of when they take on bigger roles. In a fast paced 30 minute format (with brief Q&A following), I’ll share with you:
- Fresh insights from global executives on what it takes to succeed in today’s fast-paced, matrixed environment.
- Coachable Moments tips that hundreds of my clients have used to raise their leadership game.
- Data Points that highlight some of the vital leadership behaviors that my exclusive research shows rising leaders and executives must master.
Click here to register online now for the tele-seminar and take a few moments to pose a question you’d like for me to cover during the call. It’s a complementary event and I invite you to join in with your entire team. I’ll provide a recording of the call to all who register.
Register for the Leading at the Next Level Tele-seminar with Scott Eblin on Thursday, October 14 at 2pm ET.
What Don Draper and Gordon Gekko Have to Teach Us September 29 2010 no responses
Don Draper and Gordon Gekko are two guys who are making a lot of money. While that statement may be true in the fictional realm, it’s definitely true in the literal realm. Over the past four years, Mad Men, with its lead character, advertising exec Don Draper, has become more and more popular as evidenced by ratings, buzz and marketing tie-ins. This past weekend, Gordon Gekko was back in Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. It was number one at the box office.
What is it about these two guys that fascinates us so much? A lot of it can be summed up in a funny bit that actor Jon Hamm did in character for Saturday Night Live – Don Draper’s Guide to Picking Up Women. The secret, as Don says, is to have a great name, look fantastic in a suit, look fantastic in casual wear, be uncannily successful at your job and blow people away anytime you say anything.
All of that seems to work for Gordon Gekko as well – especially the part about blow people away anytime you say anything. My wife and I went to see Wall Street 2 over the weekend and loved it. One of the early scenes in the movie is Gekko giving a speech to promote his new book, Is Greed Good?, to a full house of business school students. Since this is a PG-13 rated blog, I won’t share his opening line but there are a lot of good ones such as, “You’re the NINJA generation – no income, no jobs, no assets.”
So, what , if anything, can we learn from Draper and Gekko?
Special Opportunities for Fans of The Next Level September 28 2010 no responses
The 2nd edition of my book, The Next Level: What Insiders Know About Executive Success, 2nd Edition
What’s the Same –
- The same model and advice of what executive leaders need to pick up and let go of to meet the challenges of the next level.
What’s New –
- Nineteen Coachable Moment sidebars that provide proven context specific coaching tips for improving leadership effectiveness.
- Data Points that spotlight the vital leadership behaviors that our research shows rising leaders and executives must master.
- Fresh insights from global executives on what it takes to succeed in a competitive marketplace.
- An expansion of the popular Situation Solutions Guide appendix to provide tips on how to deal with more of the predictable situations that executives will face in their career.
Interested in the complementary leadership development opportunities we’re offering with the book launch? Read on for more details:
Video Book Club: Anytime Coaching September 28 2010 no responses
Let me acknowledge a deeply held personal bias. Any leader who manages people needs to know how to coach for performance. In their book, Anytime Coaching
In addition to talking about why I like Anytime Coaching in this video clip, I actually show you why I like the book. It’s straightforward and easily accessible. If you’re interested in being a better coach, you should read it.
Leaders Need to Work the Diagonals September 27 2010 one response
As I discuss in The Next Level
When I was doing the research for the second edition of The Next Level
One of the leaders I interviewed for the new edition was Avon’s Chief Information Officer, Donagh Herlihy. Here’s some of what he said about his diagonal leadership strategy:
I’m very informal… I build relationships and trust with peers, but I also like to know their people up and down the organization… I have lots of different informal data points. A lot of it is just when you bump into people and you know them, even though there are two levels of separation from you… Having a kind of richer data set in terms of informal feedback is very, very helpful.
So, how do you work the diagonals? Here are three ideas for how to do it:
How to Not Be a Blockbuster September 24 2010 2 responses
The New York Times reports that Blockbuster Video, with a billion dollars in debts it can't pay, is filing for bankruptcy. What a great case study in how an organization can go from king of the mountain to yesterday's news. It doesn't take long these days.
When my family moved to the DC area in 1999, the neighborhood Blockbuster store was a regular destination for the four of us on Friday nights. We'd spend an hour looking at the racks and racks of VHS tapes. Seemed like the ones we really wanted were usually checked out.
Blockbuster was fun, but the late fees drove us crazy. We could never get the movies back on time and I regularly ended up spending 20 or 25 bucks in fees the next time we rented a movie. When Netflix came along with their monthly fee, keep the movie as long as you want approach, we were happy to sign up for nine dollars a month because we were coming out ahead on the deal. Netflix is what prompted us to drop the VHS format and flip over to DVDs. In the last four months, I've started streaming Netflix movies on my iPad.
All of that in the space of 11 years. Wow. Fast Company ran a fascinating chronology of events in the life of Blockbuster this week. Back in 2000, Blockbuster had the opportunity to buy Netflix for $50 million. They passed. Probably a good thing for all of us movie buffs that they did.
So what could Blockbuster have done to survive? The same thing that any organization that wants to survive and win needs to do these days – ask tough questions. If you're the leader you have to ask them, encourage them and motivate people to act on the answers. There are a lot of good questions you can ask. Some of the ones that I think would have helped Blockbuster that might help other organizations include:
- What do our customers hate about us?
- What do they love about us?
- What do we do if they start loving things we don't offer?
- Where is the technology taking our business?
- How can we do things faster? Easier?
- If we had to cut our costs by 50% and raise customer satisfaction by 50% at the same time, how would we do it?
Like I said, there are lots of questions you can ask to keep your organization from going literally or figuratively bankrupt. What questions would you add to the list?
A Simple Way to Avoid Group Think September 22 2010 no responses
Have you ever been in a group problem solving session that ended too soon? Your immediate response to that question may be, “How could any meeting end too soon? I spend too much time in meetings as it is, so the shorter the better.” I’m with you. In most organizations, there are so many meetings that actual productivity suffers. (For ideas on how to deal with that, check out this recent post.)
Here’s what I mean, though, by a problem solving session that ended too soon. The way you know it ended too soon is when whatever solution that was agreed upon is ineffective at best or blows up in everyone’s face at worst. The root cause of that outcome is often because teams don’t spend enough time considering alternatives before arriving at a decision and they ignore the impact of their decision on the different stakeholders involved.
Group think is on my mind this week because I’m getting ready to coach a leadership team in an offsite tomorrow. As prep for the meeting, everyone has completed the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). At this point, it seems like every manager and leader in private and public sector America has taken the MBTI at least once. My complaint with it is it’s often used like an interesting party game – a source of entertainment, but not much practical application. I’m going to use it with this leadership team to point out what their “go-to” moves are from a problem solving and decision making standpoint and what they’re likely to overlook and ignore. If they’re like a lot of leadership teams I’ve worked with, they’re going to be long on facts and analysis and short on generating alternatives and considering the impact of their decisions.
Fortunately, there’s a simple way to round out the group problem solving process so that all of the bases are touched. Without getting into the ins and outs of the Myers-Briggs, here’s how it works:
Video Book Club: One Page Talent Management September 21 2010 no responses
Talent management is one of those areas where the best intentions can quickly turn into a complicated mess that everybody hates. Fortunately, Marc Effron and Miriam Ort are here to save us from ourselves with their book, One Page Talent Management.
In this week’s book club video, I share three simple (and whack up the side of the head obvious) design principles that Marc and Miriam apply to designing talent management initiatives such as performance reviews, 360 degree feedback and succession planning. I like their book a lot because their process of applying some basic design principles to common processes is one that has application far beyond the realm of talent management and human resources. It’s a great book for anyone charged with developing talent. That’s just about any leader; not just those in the talent management function.
New Ideas for Picking Up the Outside-In Perspective September 20 2010 2 responses
The second edition of my book, The Next Level
In writing the second edition, I wanted to provide some new thinking and ideas on picking up a global perspective on the outside in approach so I interviewed a lot of executives who think that way. One of those executives was James Kelly. James is the founder of what is now the global consulting firm Capgemini. After a long career of working with global organizations, James describes the trap that a lot of leaders step into:
“The fact is, there are talented people all over the world. The cultures and economic opportunities are different in different parts of the world. The more high level an executive you become, the more you have to help people connect and learn across the boundaries. You can’t just come in and say you know what has to be done and you’re going to tell people how to do it. . . . One of the barriers I’ve seen is when people come in with the mind-set of saying I need to own the answers because of my experience. [Today’s world requires] a much more collaborative and open-minded approach to listening and communicating. It requires deliberately speaking to people who may be peers or subordinates before you think you have answers and, in the process, actually engaging with other people to create those answers. In an increasingly global world, that’s extremely important.”
So how do you guard against the myopia of the inside out view and pick up that outside in perspective? As Steve Jobs might say, James Kelly has an app for that. Here’s Kelly’s three step process for picking up an outside in perspective:
Wally’s Advice for New Bosses September 17 2010 3 responses
Sometimes as a leadership blogger, you just need to tip your hat to a colleague and say, “Well done, sir (or ma’am).” That’s the case today with Wally Bock’s post, So, now you’re the boss. Wally succinctly ticks off the points that any new boss needs to remember. Here’s a taste, but you owe it to yourself to read his post (or, do a new boss a favor, and send it to them):
- Friendship will be more complicated.
- People will treat you differently.
- Don’t let it go to your head.
- You’ll have less power, but more influence (Unless you misuse it. Influence is kind of like holding a little bird. Squeeze it too hard and you’ll kill it.)
- You’re going to need honest feedback; figure out how to get it. Better yet, listen to it when you get it.
For a real life case study, of what can happen when new bosses don’t follow these rules, read this article in the Washington Post on how Adrian Fenty lost the mayor’s job in DC this week or revisit my post from last month on how he was on his way to losing it. It’s kind of uncanny how he did the opposite of everything Wally suggests.
What else does every new boss need to remember?
Scott Eblin is an executive coach, speaker and author of 
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