Andrew Sobel, author of Making Rain and Clients for Life, is a leading authority on developing resilient client and customer relationships. He works with many large professional services firms on how they can better connect with senior executives at other companies. I met with Andrew recently to talk about the growing importance of value for time in the executive suite. Edited excerpts of our conversation follow:
Executives have always been pressed for time. What’s changed? Continue reading » »
On May 13, my friend and esteemed colleague, Dr. Dave Ulrich, along with his wife, the noted psychologist and author, Dr. Wendy Ulrich, will be speaking about their new book, The Why of Work: How Great Leaders Create Abundant Organizations to Deliver Value. I’d like to tell you how to register for this event.
I’m terrifically excited about this new work. Dave Ulrich has been writing ground-breaking books on leadership and the people-side of organizations for over twenty years. Wendy Ulrich has been a leading thinker on the importance of meaning at work. Their new book promises to be one of the most insightful and important books of the year, and the newly recovering economy. It presents a message and an opportunity for organizations to regain their Mojo! Continue reading » »
Why is asking so important? In the Information Age, leaders must manage knowledge workers. Peter Drucker has defined knowledge workers as people who know more about what they are doing than their boss does. It is hard to tell people what to do and how to do it when they already know more than we do. In today’s rapidly changing world, we need to ask, listen and learn from everyone around us.
Research shows that asking works. Howard Morgan and I recently published a study involving more than 11,000 leaders and 86,000 of their co-workers from eight major corporations.
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After reading countless books on leadership, writing or co-editing 22 of them, and reviewing profiles for desired leadership behavior in more than 100 corporations, I think there is one critical question that repeatedly gets left out when assessing the potential of our future leaders: How much do you love leading people?
I have had the privilege of working with many wonderful leaders. Upon reflection, the best of the best had one quality in common. They loved leading people!
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My advice for young people from the West who are just entering the workforce is simple:
• It is tough out there, and it’s only going to get tougher.
• Forget about security.
• Like it or not, even if you start out with a large corporation, you are going to be an entrepreneur.
• Make peace with this reality, and your life is going to be a lot better.
GLOBALIZATION REVEALED
In the new era of uncertainty, we all need to think like entrepreneurs.
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