When it comes to careers a lot of us spend way too much time on autopilot, letting someone else decide what promotions we should be interested in and what career paths we should take.
I think some people handle their careers this way because they are pleasers at heart, and when they are asked to take […]

I have a confession to make: I was a brat.
There are a lot of us around, so odds are you probably work with one or are one (c’mon, I confessed; you can too).
The damage a brat can do
I’m talking about young (mostly), headstrong employees who know everything. In the presence of strong leadership and a […]

There are lots of little skills and bits of attitude and information you need to pull together to make a complete person, and the same is true in making a complete leader or a even complete employee. No one collection of tips, insights, tricks, and anecdotes can fully prepare you for anything interesting.
Find a foundation, […]

It is inevitable that when you are following up, looking for successes to recognize and reward, you will sometimes find problems.
Fix them swiftly
When you find problems, take swift but appropriate action to correct them. Just as rewards and recognition must be delivered close to the accomplishment in order to reinforce the behavior, corrections must also […]

Speaking of following through, when you find success, recognize it. It always surprises me how effective recognition is, and there is tremendous variety in how you can give it.
I have a hierarchy of recognition that I use depending upon the magnitude of the accomplishment.
The “Everyday”
For the everyday attaboy, I’ll try to run into the […]

We touched a little bit on part of this concept already when we discussed the need for everyone to perform. If you do everything we’ve talked about so far just right, have your teams set up, and take the time to empower them to make decisions, but you do nothing else, all your work will […]

G. M. ‘Zak’ Kozak has over 35 years of leadership experience that began during his first career as an enlisted soldier in the Special Forces. Zak retired as an Army officer following assignments with The Joint Staff in the Pentagon and moved on to become an information services director at Purdue University. He is now […]

Right, so now you’re convinced that you shouldn’t create a vision by committee. That’s a good thing. You’re ready for the risk of failure. But you also know that it’s your team that’s going to have to bring your brilliant vision to life, and if you aren’t writing by committee, then how do you get […]

When you mention that you are working on a vision for your organization, it is almost inevitable that some helpful wag will say that you need buy-in on the vision and that the only way to get that is to have a committee help you form the vision. This sounds like a good idea.
The case […]

So you’ve taken your time, built up a big picture, and now you have a vision you’re ready to share throughout your organization (inform and infuse).
Butterflies in the stomach? Palms sweaty? Yeah, me too.
This is your job, and you’ve got to do it or your organization will never grow or change, which means it will […]