Today’s question comes from a leader who is familiar with some of my past work, specifically, The Secret of Teams and Chess Not Checkers. If you are not, here’s a really quick overview: one is about the power of teams and the other is about the largely untapped potential resident in our organizations at large. The question from this leader: “How are the two ideas connected?”
Tag: organization
Today, I attended a Chess Not Checkers workshop with several hundred leaders. The content was strong, the communicator was phenomenal and the instructional design was engaging and highly interactive. At several points in the daylong program, the participants were asked to record questions that had come to mind during the previous sessions.
Momentary greatness is common – sustained greatness is rare. You may have experienced it yourself. I have. I can hit an amazing golf shot or make a 25 foot putt and then, reality sets in. My next drive goes 30 feet rather than 300 yards and I can easily miss a 2 foot putt! The same challenge exists in organizations. The great ones are able to consistently Excel at Execution… how?
This past weekend I spoke to a group of leaders about how to strengthen the teams in their organization. I chose today’s topic: Community. Although the concept of community is at the core of what creates a High Performance Team, it is also one of the twelve best practices to unlock organizational performance.
While writing Chess Not Checkers, it became clear early in the process to create the type of organization that could win consistently, it would be critical for people to Act as One. However, a new insight surfaced along the way – It is much easier to align the “right people.” This simple observation, witnessed time and time again, compelled us to add Staff with Eagles as one of the best practices of High Performance Organizations.
High Performance Organizations do things lesser performing organizations don’t – today’s post is a perfect example. HPOs create clarity on what’s important throughout the enterprise. The fact that clarity is so illusive in many organizations is a mystery unto itself. Organizations lack clarity not for it’s inherent difficulty, rather for the diligence required from leadership. A lack in clarity is a lack of leadership.
Most sports teams have huddles. These huddles may be formal or informal, sometimes they are during the action and at other times, they are in between plays. There is a little known, and less often practiced, discipline among many successful organizations: team huddles. Today’s Challenge question: How do I make my team huddles add value?
This post originally appeared on July 18, 2012.
I believe core values are one of the most powerful mechanisms at a leader’s disposal. Core Values are nothing more than the short list of beliefs that a leader articulates to guide the formation of the organization’s culture. Core Values should become the DNA of an organization.But first, there is a prerequisite…
I was in a planning meeting; we were thinking about the upcoming decade. The question we were wrestling with was this: “What do we want to be true in our organization ten years from now that is not true today?” It was the perfect question to force us to take a hard look at our current reality and stretch us at the same time.
Author, consultant and former professor at Stanford, Jim Collins believes greatness is born of discipline. His prescription: disciplined people – disciplined thought – disciplined action. I agree with Jim. Recently, I received a question from a leader who asked, “How do you create organizational discipline?”