FieldNotes
Our daily Field Notes email is just the kind of jumpstart you need. A fast read. Maybe less than a minute. Because sometimes it just takes one insight to change the trajectory of the day.
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Stop Hoarding Key Work
Your ability to delegate important work defines your success as a leader. Redirecting important work to others means you’re finally using leverage. Delegating work allows others to develop the skills essential for long-term team success. Not only does delegating work allow you the time to focus on the highest impact tasks, but it also shows
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Decisions and the Unknown Unknowns
Nearly every bad decision shares a common flaw. Something undermined the outcome we hoped for. Worse, that something is a factor not previously known to us. You may be familiar with the framework used by the American politician Donald Rumsfeld. There are known knowns, things that we know. There are known unknowns, things that we know we don’t know.
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A Question for High Performers
Sometimes, high performers are highly sensitive to critique of any kind, especially after a poor performance. They bristle at even discussing the performance. They push away valuable feedback. As a result of being accustomed to performance success, this sensitivity serves as a defensive attempt to prevent others from lowering their confidence. Ironically, it is immediately
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Stop Calling for Meetings
Are you leading in a meeting culture? Meeting cultures exist in those teams and organizations where meetings have become the essence of work. In meeting cultures, spending time in meetings counts as producing results. Meetings take on so much value that pre-meetings, meetings after meetings, and meetings to plan meetings are commonplace. Leaders in these cultures
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Seeing Criticism as Compliment
The highest compliment leaders can offer to those they lead is to make the effort to help them succeed. This requires feedback — sometimes hard feedback. We wouldn’t do it if we didn’t care about the progress others could make. To care enough to lead and offer feedback is no small gesture. It is what
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Invest the Time to Kill Bad Ideas
When we think of great leadership, we often think of leaders who make big, bold decisions, thereby changing the world around them. Making quality decisions is a hallmark of leadership and it is hard to conceive of an Admired Leader who isn’t known for the decisions they make. When it comes to extraordinary leadership; however,
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Don’t Tolerate This Kind of Subversion
When teams come together over issues, concerns are expressed, advocacy occurs, decisions get made. Everyone present claims to support those decisions. Soon thereafter, those with doubts begin to express their disagreement to others. The “They” versus “We” begins to leak out. With their own teams, statements like, “They made a bad call, but we’re going
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‘You Are Acting Out of Character’
Offering feedback when others are generally unaware of the negative impact they are having can be tricky. When a trusted colleague or leader unknowingly becomes more negative, dominant, distracted, status-conscious, or disengaged (among other issues), we face a unique feedback challenge. How do we offer this feedback without creating a strong and negative reaction? The
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How Strong Is Your Capital Balance Sheet?
The real balance sheet of your organization is about much more than economics. The truth is, there is a lot of capital running around your organization. We all know how important it is to have access to Financial Capital, either by creating it, borrowing it, or collecting it. Businesses don’t exist without working capital to pay
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Expect a Drop in Performance
When leaders introduce colleagues to a new way of doing things, they can expect a temporary drop in performance. This is especially true for new colleagues who have never been exposed to a particular way of achieving results. Any time leaders introduce a new learning, a new discipline, or a new language of doing things,