We would all like to think that we are completely aware as leaders of what is happening around us and completely self-aware of how we are contributing to it but here is a harsh reality:
You probably are missing a lot... you have blind spots.
No matter how much time we invest in personal development, leadership development, and improving our skills as managers we all have blind spots in our leadership. We aren't seeing some important things that affect the performance of our organization, our people, and our outcomes.
Those blind spots may lead you to make poor choices (as they did recently with Wells Fargo and their "incentives"), they may be contributing to a poor office culture which you as the leader don't see, or they may simply be limiting your employee's engagement in their work which leads to poor productivity, outcomes, and likely loss of some of your talented team members.
The reality is that every leader has blind spots... you aren't...
As traditional organizations look to address the new competition and rapidly increasing pace of change in today's competitive marketplace I see some fascinating struggles. Traditional markets are seeing unprecedented changes in their customer's expectations. New competitors who are chipping away at their traditional profit centres. There are even changes in the employee base with the emergence of the millennial workforce and the retirement long-standing organizational leaders. The result is an emerging culture of firefighting which is a drain on everyone in the company. To successfully deal with the unprecedented level of change you need to stop firefighting.
Speed Matters - But Only If You Have a Clear Plan
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Over the past several months I've been spending a lot of time looking at the industry in which I work (Financial Services) and wondering what it is that keeps this industry from leading in innovation. Like many other industries, the leaders in banking regularly talk about innovation, and some even claim to be leaders in innovation. But as I look across the industry I see very little real change. Even the best innovators in Financial Services are making primarily incremental changes, with very few disruptive ideas coming from the incumbents.
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I was reading through my news headlines in Google Reader this afternoon and was reminded that the NHL hockey season is once again around the corner and in fact today is the first pre-season game for my beloved Toronto Maple Leafs. You can pity me all you want... I was born with the Leaf blood running through my veins (thanks Grandpa!)... we will win the cup again (one of these days).
The fact that it's Game Day reminded me of an article I read the other day from the Harvard Business Review about just that topic with an Entrepreneurial twist. Turns out professional athletes have it easy (who would have thought ) only having to put on their game face once every two to three days during the playing season. Monica Tate-Maile, in her article For Entrepreneurs, Every Day Is Game Day, highlights the differences between the corporate world and the Entrepreneurial world when it comes to anyone looking at starting their own business.
She specifically gives three pieces of...
