Leadership & Changing Your Mind
How difficult is it for you to change your mind? When was the last time you changed your mind? Do you consistently challenge your own thinking, or do you wait for others to bring the challenge to you? When your thinking is confronted, how do you react? I've often said the rigidity of a closed mind is the first step in limiting leadership opportunity. I can think of no better definition for a…
M&A Without Buying the Company
Most people tend to look at acquisitions from a rather myopic and traditional M&A perspective: making a strategic or synergistic purchase of an operating entity on an accretive basis. However, restricting your view of acquisitions to operating companies is like playing a football game with only one play in your playbook. The truth is that acquisitions aren't just about buying companies,…
Leadership & Courage
Courage is a trait possessed by all great leaders. So much so, that leadership absent courage is nothing short of a farce. Let me be very clear - I'm not advocating for bravado, arrogance, or an overabundance of hubris, but the courage necessary to stay the course and to do the right things. Standing behind decisions that everyone supports doesn't particularly require a lot of chutzpah. On the…
Social Media for CEOs
Nary a week passes where I don't hear from a CEO who's grappling with this social media conundrum: should I, or shouldn't I? The inquiry usually goes something like this: "I'm interested in learning more about social media, but my board thinks it's a bad idea, I don't have any additional bandwidth, and I'm not even sure where to start...is social media really effective for CEOs?" The discussion…
Leadership – What’s Next?
There is no shortage of debate surrounding leadership when it comes to philosophy, style, definitional distinctions, nuances, complex theory, etc. That said, I believe most reasonable people would agree leadership is nothing if not personal. Leadership can represent a pursuit, discipline, practice, passion, calling, skill, competency, obligation, duty, compulsion, or even an obsession. I've…
The Leadership Line
I had an email yesterday from a CEO who described himself as "constantly being sucked down into the weeds." In helping him walk through the logic of why and where to allocate his time, I used the information in the video below as a baseline illustration for discussion purposes. The constructs in this message compose a visual I developed more than 20 years ago, and the interesting thing is that…
The Problem With Key Employees
What is a key employee, and who is worthy of such a title? Much has been written on key employees, and in my opinion, most of it flat misses the mark. I'll go so far as to say what most people refer to as key employees are not assets but rather significant contingent liabilities. I'm not disputing the need to retain talent and reduce turnover, but I am vehemently denying the conventional wisdom…
Capital vs. Influence
I have watched entrepreneurs and executives initially trivialize the value of influence in a capital transaction, only to regret it down the road. Savvy CEOs simply aren't in a rush to close the deal and secure the funding if it means sacrificing knowledge, experience or influence. Impulsivity has a huge cost when it comes to capital formation. I have long held that the influence a capital…
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