Weekly Posts and Insights
5 Ways To Bring Your Organization’s Values To Life Every Day
Perhaps contrary to popular opinion, defining and exercising your organizational values is one of the most powerful tools you have at your disposal as a leader of your organization. Workplace values set the tone for your chamber or association’s culture, and they identify what your organization, as a whole, cares about.
Really Setting and Accomplishing Goals for the Next Year and Decade with a One Page Strategy
The One Page Strategy (OPS) has helped me put all my strategic and yearly plans and goals all on one sheet. The idea is that by putting it on one sheet you can look at it throughout the year to make progress on those goals.
Not only are all your goals and projects on one sheet, it also holds you accountable as you look at it from time to time throughout the year to measure your effectiveness in achieving your goals.
How to keep from losing good young leaders at your organization
raditionally, corporations have long talked about the leadership ladder - each rung of the proverbial ladder equaling a new role, title, pay, and/or leadership level. Unfortunately, that’s quite an outdated model and just doesn’t work for the new worker.
When we look at the Leadership Growth Lattice, it functions like the name. Instead of straight up, its sprawls out like a garden lattice. It assists in creating a “holistic” employee with multiple dimensions of growth, service and leadership.
Imagine a lattice and the buckets you may want an employee to think about as they grow within your organization.
Who Needs a Strategic Plan?
You might hear, “strategic planning doesn’t work because things are moving too fast.” Or, “we’ve operated just fine with no plan so why start now?” And finally, “you can’t plan 3-years out with the pace of societal change.” No matter the reasons, a volunteer driven organization needs the buy-in, commitment and a check on its relevance. Without a plan how will alignment with finances, committees and staff be checked?
Study Finds People Get Promoted Most In The Summer. How To Get Your Boss To Notice You.
In a Wall Street Journal Career Strategies article, Most Promotions Take Place in January, Study Finds, depending on the industry, a study finds June, July, and September are also popular months for job advancement. This is a great window of time to build on your strengths, neutralize your weaknesses, and demonstrate why your boss should take notice. Here are a couple of maverick thoughts of our own with ways to become indispensable this summer.
The Power of Building Good Habits
As leaders there's always one behavior or another we're trying to shape or change in others. What about the chronic latecomer, the constant complainer and the time management challenged? We attempt to give constructive feedback, help them set goals or focus on teamwork and continuous improvement. Sometimes it clicks; sometimes it doesn’t. Do you know how much our habits actually impact our behavior choices (which is either what you’re trying to stop in others or grow in others), or how habits can by-pass our decision-making function?
What Am I Looking For When I Build My Next Workplace Team?
Teaming can be this big word, especially if you’re new at it. Really, it's just a group of people getting together working a problem, right? As a new leader you may be called upon to form your next team, perhaps your first one?! Here is where I would start if I were to build a very adaptable, high level, results-oriented team:
How do I make it so my meetings aren't a waste of time?
I know I’ve written about this recently, but it's an important topic. Meetings are the game field. Meetings decide well...decisions! And who wins! And how the team functions! Did you know: between 35-50% of meeting time is seen as wasted, most meetings start 8-12 minutes late, 75% say agendas are not prepared and distributed in advance, less than 30% of decisions in meetings are recorded, and over 40% of people don’t know the purpose of the meeting they’re attending.
Using the CAMP Method of Motivation to Motivate and Retain Your Staff
This past week, wearing my other hat as chamber director for southwestern Vermont, I had the pleasure to present at the Vermont Tourism Summit in Burlington, Vermont. My topic was on “Building Your Brand With Local Talent.” Now, because of my job and my background, the presentation was heavy on marketing tactics. However, I was able to weave in some of my other passion - motivating teams.
Right, makes sense! With all the strategy and tools to get the marketing job done, we still have the fundamental challenge of human beings leading the charge. We still need to make sure our staff, teammates or freelancers are happy. This is where I often weaved in our CAMP Method of Motivation.
I’m losing focus on my goals a quarter of the way through the year! How do I get it back?
Right around this time of year, I find that my immune system just gives out. I had tried my hardest, forced as much sun-soaked vitamin D in our northeast summers, popped the multitude of good-for-you vitamins, washed my hands every time I could, alas I tend to get a cold during March or April. I think this New England body just runs out of reserves.
Equally, it can seem that way at work, at the gym, working on projects. We enter the new year with such gusto, however when we get past the first quarter of the year, the tyranny of the urgent can take our eyes off of the goal. We lose focus.