Lately, I have found myself uttering the phrases “we need to pick our battles ” often followed by “there are bigger fish to fry” at least once per week- enough to notice it and write a blog post about it. When running a complex business operation, there will always be problems to solve and coworkers that you disagree with, but if you take action on every problem and confront every disagreement, you will actually lessen not increase progress. Strategically, picking your battles will increase your leadership effectiveness. How do you know which battles to fight? Ask yourself this set of questions… Does the issue inRead More →

Just talking to our employees may be one of the most powerful levers to improving business performance. I have been involved in countless process and results improvement projects over the years and have noticed a specific trend. We often make the problems more complex than they need to be and, as a result, overlook one of most obvious solutions – simply discussing the problem with our team members. This is SO important because I have proof that a simple conversation between a leader and a team member happening just one time is enough to drive lasting improvement in results. Why? We often assume that theRead More →