Leadership Lessons from the Public Sector There are reasons some people are lifelong public servants and others work in the real world. Whether it’s the military, public education, a state legislature or a municipal government: a job void of profit responsibility is generally void of any true accountability. Without accountability, leadership can become unnecessary and […]
Leadership Lessons from Snow Days in Georgia (My apologies as I get a little local here, but this stuff really ticks me off.) It snowed in Georgia yesterday; this is news. Some towns, like Athens, received as much as six inches of snow. Gwinnett County, Georgia (north of Atlanta) got a little more than an […]
Leadership Lessons from Google – When a Giant Makes a Giant Mistake Google announced last week that they would close three offices and lay off 100 full-time recruiters. Even though these are the first Google-hired employees ever to lose their jobs in a workforce reduction, it’s not news… not in this economy. In fact, […]
Leading in the New Millennium: Pay for (Lack of) Performance “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” – Upton Sinclair Although Sinclair’s words were uttered in 1935, they ring especially true when applied to the leadership void we face today. While Sinclair, a […]
Brett “Cuatro” Favre and the Leadership Lesson of Humility When you’re wrong, you’re wrong. The best thing to do is admit it. We are certainly humble enough to admit it. At the beginning of the 2008 NFL season we predicted that the New York Jets would finish the season no better than 8-8… we were […]
More Leadership Lessons from Delta Airlines In a recent post, we admonished Delta Airlines for the ill-conceived, confusing Delta Breezeway enacted in late 2007. It seemed that even months after its introduction, most Delta gate agents and Delta frequent fliers still had no idea how to use them. We are proud to say that between […]
Why Detroit Deserved Their Bailout… (We understand we’re a little late to the party, but we were on hiatus during the whole Auto Bailout mess, and we felt we would be remiss if we didn’t provide our two cents.) While there is no doubt that the Detroit automakers sowed many of the seeds of their […]
Leadership Lessons from Donovan McNabb After five quarters of football on Sunday, November 16, 2008, the Philadelphia Eagles and the Cincinnati Bengals played to a 13-13 tie. This tie was the first the NFL had seen in six years – ties, it seems, are rare in the NFL. After the game, Eagles quarterback Donovan […]
Goldman Leaders Forgo 2008 Bonuses In a recent email from one of our readers, we were asked to weigh in on the Goldman Sachs Group’s leadership decision to request no bonuses for the current calendar year. What are your thoughts on the following article? How does this reflect leadership during these troubled times? – Tye […]
Circuit City – Another One Bites the Dust In what might be the least surprising business announcement of 2008, Circuit City filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Monday. Wow, really? Color us shocked. To be honest, we’re a little shocked it took this long. We’re also a little surprised that their creditors aren’t […]
The 25 Most Annoying Business Phrases Managers Use From the overused to the clichéd, we are inundated on a daily basis with annoying and ridiculous business phrases from the lips of well-meaning managers. Why so many of us, present company included, rely on the latest catch phrases or tired business jargon to relay a particular […]
It’s the Leadership, Stupid These past few months have seen the greatest turmoil in the worldwide credit and stock markets most of us have ever experienced. With depression-like drops in equities and recession-like layoffs, foreclosures and bankruptcies, nearly everyone has been too busy bailing water to blame the Captain… until now. While much of the […]
Bloomberg The Emperor We wrote a few weeks ago about the seemingly unbelievable possibility that New York Mayor Michael “Nero” Bloomberg would seek to have the City Council overturn New York’s term limits law – opening the door for Bloomberg The Emperor to serve a third term. (To read that post, follow this link.) […]
Leadership Means Knowing When Not To Act Remember that great little restaurant you frequented a few years ago? You know the one; they had that terrifically tasty dish that kept you coming back again and again. Remember when they changed ownership and the new proprietors altered the recipes? The way I remember it, the new […]
Leadership, Personal Relationships and Infidelity John Edwards, Elliott Spitzer, Kwame Kilpatrick and Jennifer Aniston’s mates. What do these men have in common? Hint: they are all alleged to have a problem keeping their pants on in the presence of women who are not their significant others. After hearing about the John Edwards infidelity revelations […]
Leadership Lessons from Mayor Bloomberg (and Other Emperors) We’ve often written in this Leadership Development blog about the important traits for good leaders. From intelligence to character, we’ve worked hard to identify those qualities that can help young managers become leaders and older leaders regain their edge. Over the course of these posts, we’ve […]
Forgetting The Goal – A Leadership Dilemma Everywhere consumers turn today they see examples of poor leadership. They may not recognize these little inconveniences as leadership voids, but they are voids nonetheless. While the lack of true leadership in American business spells trouble for employees and middle managers, a byproduct of this missing leadership […]
Which Presidential or Vice Presidential Hopeful Would Make the Best Leader? Over the past several days, the editors of AskTheManager.com released their leadership ratings and rankings of all forty-two US Presidents from Washington to Bush. We examined how these men would perform as the CEO of a Fortune 500 company by using what […]
How Do US Presidents Rank as Business Leaders? (Part Three of Three) (This is the third article in a three-series post. Please see the first and second articles in this series by following this link for our notes associated with each President, and this link for our “worst to first” rankings of the […]
How Do Our 42 US Presidents Rank as Leaders? (Part Two of Three) Where does your favorite President of the United States rank in terms of business leadership in the new millennium? Could all or any of the US Presidents successfully run a large corporation today? Did they have what it takes to […]