Few leaders have earned a reputation for being an exceptional talent developer… but they’re out there.  You may have heard of some of them.  In professional football, 20 of the NFL’s 32 head coaches trained under Bill Walsh or under someone in his coaching tree. In hedge funds, Julian Robertson, the founder of the investment firm…

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Do you think you know how much it costs to recruit a manager or executive? You might take a moment to calculate the costs of advertising and agency fees, the time it takes to screen resumes and interview candidates, and the cost of onboarding. But if that’s all you’re thinking about, you’re barely scratching the…

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If you’re a leader, you’ve probably heard the quote “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” Unfortunately, when it comes to which one gets more attention from executives, it’s strategy, without question. This is perhaps because, to most executives, strategy is easier to manage. What many leaders fail to realize is that if they aren’t managing their…

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I’ve been speaking and writing a lot about a seemingly counter-intuitive concept: putting employees ahead of customers and profits is the surest path to exceptional customer service and financial success. It’s also the most fundamental (and most frequently missed) pre-requisite to building a pipeline of leadership and talent within an organization. But what does that look like……

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Since the dawn of the industrial revolution the most common criteria for promoting people to leadership positions has primarily been their technical ability.  Naturally, new managers tend to do the things that got them promoted, that is, they do the most challenging work themselves and leave the leftover tasks to less technically competent workers (those…

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Whether you know it or not, people are watching you.  They’re learning from you and trying to infer the motives of your actions.  Now, if you’re a leader, its safe to assume that others are watching you about five times more closely than they normally would—dissecting, analyzing, and categorizing everything you say and do, as…

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I served as the third-in-command in a large branch of a fairly dynamic service organization.  When I recently told my leader that I was transferring to serve as the second-in-command at a different branch of the same service organisation, he told me “Go show them what it means to be a first follower.”  I was…

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Have you ever wondered how you can convince your best employees to stick around long enough to be able to include them in your company’s long-term plans?  Do you ever feel like your younger employees have the attention span of a gnat, that they are constantly looking to chase the next shiny object (AKA “job…

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I recently wrote about the Coming Talent Revolution and the calamity it will cause employers who are not paying attention to the signals in the current labour market.  Employees are no longer content to work for an employer who puts profits before people and purpose.  The best talent will inevitably be drawn to progressive employers…

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