Intern season is in full stride and across the United States. Fresh faces, with new ideas and aspirations have been hard at work for a couple of months in most organizations. And now, they are watching the summer break come to an end and hoping to be a potential new hire for your company in […]

What does it mean to be a high potential employee in your organization? How does your company define the term? Formally, you may define it as an employee  who is ready to take on a role that is significantly more complex than his/her current role. That is a lot of words … and for most […]

How do you manage your high potentials? Do you recognize them publicly? Do you put them into a development program? Or, do you make assumptions about what they know? If you do recognize them or put them into a development program it is a good start, but it is not everything. You cannot end there […]

If you lead people, learn to lead them with your actions not your words. As they say in The Game of Thrones on HBO, words are wind. If you are leading people and not setting standards through your actions, you are missing an opportunity to inspire your people. Too many times in my career I […]

Recently there has been a growing body of work that has looked at organizational culture as the catalyst for innovation and success. Look at companies like Apple, Starbucks, Nordstrom, Disney, L.L. Bean and Zappos and you start to see that culture matters. Take Nordstrom and their unwavering commitment to customer service. It is their bread and […]

I have spent a good deal of my professional career building leadership programs across various levels. And, I have seen a lot of good and a lot of bad leaders come through those programs. I have watched as people successfully transitioned to the next level and beyond and sadly I have seen people flame out […]

It is time to take a critical look at your talent and start asking the tough questions. Is the talent that you have today ready to meet your business needs of tomorrow? It is not an easy question and it is fairly subjective, but you have to do it. Most importantly, you have to do […]

Nobody wants to be told they are average. It has become a negative connotation in our vernacular, and deservedly so in some ways. But when we start force ranking people we put 70% of our employees into that space. We tell them they are average. We give them a standard 3% raise and then pay […]

Are we in the middle of a leadership crisis? Depending on what you read and who you listen to, we are in the middle of a leadership crisis. There are power vacuums across the political, social and business spectrums. Leaders apparently are in short supply. But is this really the truth of it? Are we […]