PrimeGenesis Blog
Contrasts in Controlling the Conversation: Armstrong vs. Weiner
Accepting that it's always dangerous to comment on things while they are happening, there seems to be a marked difference between how Lance Armstrong and Anthony Weiner have handled recent controversies. Weiner Tweeting Lewd Pictures? Somebody sent somebody...
New Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Shifts from Commanding to Advising
The man whom President Obama described as “One of our nation’s most respected and combat-tested generals” will no longer command any troops. In his role as Army Chief of Staff, the entire US Army obeys Martin Dempsey’s orders. But in his new role as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he will give up that command authority. Chairman is merely an advisory role. To be fair, this is about as good as it gets as far as advisory roles go in that he will be the president’s principal military advisor.
In this role, Dempsey will need to play up his leadership skills around influencing and put his decision-making skills on the back burner. Of course he’s the same person he was yesterday, but the context he’s operating in is different. Too many leaders fail in new roles because they fail to adjust to changing contexts. This is particularly challenging for someone moving from commanding to advising. Dempsey’s move is one example, but this is the situation faced by every CEO managing the transition to non-executive chairman.
New Leader's Journal Introduction
The new leader's journal tracks the experience of a fictional executive leading up to and through his first 100-days in a new job. As of this writing, May-28-2011, our fictional executive is in the final stages of interviewing. We expect him to get an offer...
Onboarding Done Better
In his recent article in Inc. Dave Smith picks up on my point that the way you onboard new employees is communicating the culture, modeling the culture, and forming the culture all at the same time. Click to go to online article BRAVE Framework The more we look at it,...
How Kenexa CEO Rudy Karsan is Making the Salary.com Acquisition Work
Former Ernst & Young Partner and Coca Cola CEO Doug Ivester once told me that 30% of acquisitions fail because the acquiring company overpays and saddles itself with unrealistic pro forma plans. They get behind and never catch up. Kenexa CEO Rudy Karsan and his team had no intention of letting that happen to them with their acquisition of Salary.com late last year. Instead, as they reported on May 3, over their first six months, their transition management has them ahead of plan on all the main dimensions.
Karsan knows that financial returns are highly correlated with employee engagement. He explained to me that their studies show that the total shareholder return of the 25 corporations with the highest levels of employee engagement were +18% over the last 15 years as compared to a -4% return for the bottom 25 corporations. Further, employees with effective leadership are six times more engaged than those without effective leadership. There’s more on this in Karsan’s book We: How to Increase Performance and Profits Through Full Engagement.
Thus, Karsan knew that he had to put effective leadership in place in Salary.com to engage his new employees.
Communication basics: who what how
Whether you are onboarding into a new firm, taking on a new leadership role, or managing a team transition, the communication basics always apply. Three critical decisions should guide everything you say and do and don't say and don't do: Who you...
Strategy in Action
This week we ran our 25th CEO Boot Camp since CEO Connection started in 2005. Great group of CEOs and speakers discussed transformational leadership, stewardship, human capital, and communication. A couple of themes seemed to cross the modules. The...
The Secret to Jets Coach Rex Ryan Winning Record is His “Whole Team” Approach
It’s not that Ryan is asking individuals to subordinate their hopes and needs to the team. He’s asking them to leverage those hopes and needs to make the team do better. Jets player Jim Leonhard explained it this way to The New York Times’ Toni Monkovic,
This system puts guys in positions to make big plays. This coaching staff does a great job of determining what each player’s strengths are and trying to put them in positions to utilize those strengths on a play-to-play basis, not just game-to-game; play-to-play, throughout every game. As a player, you have to love that. You have to love knowing that going into every game you feel like you have the opportunity to be that guy that makes the difference.
The Difference Between Re-work and An Iterative Approach
It comes down to intent. Iterative Approach Wharton Professor Len Lodish suggests that "It is better to be vaguely right than precisely wrong". That leads to an iterative approach in which you get close to what you're looking for the first...
Freeman Dyson – “It’s complicated” (Global Warming and Organizations)
I got to spend some time with theoretical physicist and mathematician, Freeman Dyson last evening at an American Friends of Winchester College event. While he did not talk about onboarding, he did touch on several topics including his colleague John Nash...