Leadership

“The three stages of career development are:

1. I want to be in the meeting

2. I want to run the meeting

3. I want to avoid meetings.”

Managers of managers, therefore, should ask management and leadership questions. For example, "What should you do to your organization to assure that due dates are met?" or "How well do your people understand the quality standards and what are you doing to assure they meet then?" These questions elicit quite a different response and help the

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“Looking back on my career, my favorite managers allowed me to own decisions, even if they disagreed with me. They couldn't do this for every decision — some were just too expensive or difficult to reverse. But if they spotted an opportunity for me to own a decision, they let me run with it. This would often be preceded by spirited debate, where... See more

There is a set of management mistakes that managers make over and over again. Especially likely for newer managers, but it happens to more experienced people too. I’ve made all of these mistakes.

One of the easiest ways to increase your value to an organization is to reduce the friction required to get you to do your job.

Smart people know an unsettling truth: loyalty must be given before it’s earned.

The best leaders I know extend trust and loyalty long before receiving it – they treat people as if they’ve already proven trustworthy. This seems naive until you realize it’s a forcing function: by acting as if people have already earned your trust, you create the... See more

“I can’t tell you how much time is spent worrying about decisions that don’t matter. To just be able to make a decision and see what happens is tremendously empowering, but that means you have to set up the situation such that when something does go wrong, you can fix it. When something does go wrong, it doesn’t cost you or your customer an... See more

It’s a truism that you always want to hire folks with very high standards, but I’ve seen a staggering number of folks fail in an organization primarily because they want to hold others to a higher standard than their organization’s management is willing to enforce.