Strategic Leadership

Leadership Tips, Vol. 914

September 30, 2014
Take some comfort in some historic business mistakes … Say “no” to corporatespeak … Don’t sacrifice quality.

Do staffers welcome your questions?

September 20, 2014

When a technology manager at Goldman Sachs moved to HR, questioning her staff was suddenly labeled as “interrogating.” Why?

Embrace a less-is-more approach

September 10, 2014

The constant push to add new projects can stymie your team’s success. Adopting a less-is-more philosophy can free up time for those high-priority tasks that merit the most attention.

Highlight your ‘positive deviants’

September 9, 2014
In 1991, Jerry Sternin headed to Vietnam. His goal: to fight child malnutrition in poor villages. Sternin isolated the few people who were modeling problem-solving behavior when most were following negative patterns. He thus dis­­covered what the “positive deviants” did to produce such superior results.

Success comes at high price for CEO

September 3, 2014
During Alyson Pitman Giles’ 13 years at the helm of Catholic Medical Center in Manchester, N.H., the hospital’s finances reversed course. By the time she left in 2012, its operating margin exceeded $3 million. But her success did not come without turmoil.

Are you investing strategically?

September 2, 2014
Do you have too much money in­­vested in low-priority items? Execu­­tives say low-priority initiatives get too much funding, cost-cutting isn’t strategic and budgeting isn’t tightly aligned with strategic planning at their companies, according to research by Strategy&.

Don’t fall for your own story

August 15, 2014
Learn from BP’s mistakes not to fall for your own advertising.

Use questions to teach vital skills

August 12, 2014
Just six days before the now-famous hijacking of the Maersk Alabama by Somali pirates, Captain Richard Phillips held a surprise security drill aboard his ship. He wanted to test his crew’s ability to defend against a pirate attack.

Build winner with run-and-gun strategy

August 6, 2014
Whitey Herzog, winner of a World Series as manager of the St. Louis Cardinals, understood one of the most overlooked aspects of leadership: Make the best of what you’ve got.

Too much hype doomed Wyeth CEO

July 31, 2014

In 2007, Bob Essner felt justifiably triumphant. He had engineered a successful turnaround of Wyeth, the pharmaceutical giant, after six years of reinventing the company. But even after in­­creas­­ing revenue by 30%—to $20.4 billion—Essner suddenly lost his job. What went wrong?