Leadership

I often talk about ownership as a desirable characteristic for people in my team, whether as a manager or an individual contributor, so what does taking ownership really mean? When someone taking ownership describes obstacles or something unexpected having gone wrong, their language won’

When interviewing or developing a leader, I have a set of preferred behaviours, methods and values I look for. Getting this list came after a few mistakes. I've occasionally blogged about how I seek both clarity and root cause as part of my method

Over the last five years I have deliberately become more clear about my values as a leader. As a leader, values are what you stand for. If what you value is absent at work, their absence makes work relationships troublesome. Being asked to compromise

There's an important concept that all leaders have an energetic budget with which they get things done. Every demand you face spends some of your complexity budget. My earlier post outlined that idea and credits its originators. As a leader, if you have more

Every change you want to drive within a business costs you time and energy. You have a limited capacity of both. If you commit yourself to more change than your own capacity to fulfil it, you are most likely to execute the change poorly

Over the last few years, I came to properly understand this warning from John Kotter about business change: Never underestimate the magnitude of the forces that reinforce complacency and that help maintain the status quo. That's from his book Leading Change, which my friend

I am so happy about the recent publicity on introversion. I’m an introvert, and am aware of how to get the best out of myself. I’m not shy – that’s a common misunderstanding – but I prefer the inner world and gain energy

I came across two particularly good articles on how to interview and screen a sales person. The first by Dave Kurlan provides an insightful list of 10 behaviours you’d want to see, and 10 bad ones too. He likes it if candidates: talk

I read a good article today on McKinsey’s site. Their report 'putting complexity in its place' talks about organisational complexity, and makes an important distinction between individual and organisational complexity. few executives have a realistic understanding of how complexity actually affects their own

I’ve noticed some sales organisations have differences in the degree of stakeholder management expected within a project, change initiative or complex deal. Stakeholder management, for a sales person, is knowing who cares about the deal, or might get in your way, or is