Today marks the official end of the holidays. The decorations are put away, the children are back at school, and we are back at our desks. Diets are started, resolutions are made. With these new starts comes a desire to set goals for the coming 12 months. I always find it easy to make a list of ideas, and much more difficult to
Kevin Ashton was a young account executive for Proctor & Gamble in the late 1990s when he noticed one shade of the company’s lipstick was never on the shelves. Curious to better understand what was happening, he dreamed of putting microchips in the tubes, so P&G could know to ship the shade as soon as
In his book, Good to Great, Jim Collins writes that great companies have a firm understanding of three key things – what they are deeply passionate about (including core values and purpose); what drives their economic engine; and what they can be the best at in the world. To set and execute strategy, they translate these understandings into a simple, crystalline
Could avoiding layoffs or staff reductions get your company through a downturn faster? Do layoffs signal a white flag to your competitors, and a green flag to your best employees? Anyone who has worked in corporate America for long knows this truth: Massive staff reductions, called layoffs, have become a fact of working
Have you ever had the experience of pouring your heart into a project, using all your best ideas and resources as a leader, only to find that the project fails? CEO Lee Murphy was on the cusp of a project that was, to borrow language from the political arena, “too big to fail.” He was
No doubt your CEO’s business cards read “Chief Executive Officer.” But should they? This is the question Dave Smith, Ph.D., asks in his 10-minute, TED-style video Why Your CEO Needs a New Title. Smith tells the story of one Chicago executive who, faced with a financial crisis that might require laying-off a significant portion of
Culture Creators & Culture Sustainers NOTE: The following is an excerpt from Making Values Meaningful, a new e-book published by the Center for Values-Driven Leadership. Download your free copy at www.cvdl.org/menu. The first and most important thing you can do to create a values-driven organization is to make values and culture a central
Honoring Our Veterans On Veteran’s Day and every day, we are thankful for the men and women who have bravely served their country through the United States military. We are grateful for your lives of service. Our Center’s focus on strategic, ethical leadership has always created a natural affinity with
BerylHealth, a healthcare call center, had its start with three employees and the phone line in a backroom. Between 1985 and 2012, founder and CEO Paul Spiegelman grew the company to 300 employees. The company earned multiple Inc. 500 and Best Places to Work awards for its impressive growth trajectory and strong, positive culture that
Mike Faith is a man who knows he can get things wrong. He tells the story of a time when Zappos founder Tony Hsieh came to Faith with a question. “I’m going to do this shoe thing online. Want to invest?” Faith declined, saying the business would never work. Faith may have missed an opportunity