I don’t buy a dog and bark for it

Pen and Glasses and Business File on TableThe NY Times runs a weekly column entitled the Corner Office, that discusses leadership lessons from CEO’s across a broad spectrum of companies. These interviews usually recall important tenets of successful leadership and serve as a valuable reminder about important lessons and how they should be applied.

This week, Adam Bryant interviewed Susan Lyne, CEO of Gilt Groupe. Lyne reports that she has learned the importance of being committed to “stepping back to think about the big picture,” a major challenge for most business leaders. A great way to do that is to grab a blank sheet of paper to begin.

I also like her suggestion about “office hours”, an idea she picked up from a colleague who was a former college professor. (more…)

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Read more about the article CEO Round Table – Q309 Update

CEO Round Table – Q309 Update

During the last several meetings of the CEO Round Table, we’ve invested a lot of time with leading experts to discuss “Talent Management” issues. Experienced CEO’s understand that building a high performance company centers around the recruiting, retention and performance of talented executives. In building our knowledge and insights into these critical challenges, we’ve improved our recruiting skills, launched goal and performance management initiatives among member companies and learned about the strengths and weaknesses of compensation as a high performance driver.

In my experience, few CEO’s devote the necessary time to Talent Management. (more…)

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No substitute for Leadership Team

conference-table

I mentioned here before about the regular Sunday NY Times feature called the Corner Office, which summarizes conversations with various CEO’s about leadership, lessons learned, interviewing techniques, etc.

Here are 4 key lessons.

Build your Leadership Team

Sunday’s column interviewed Lawrence Kellner, CEO of Continental Airlines, who reaffirmed several points emphasized on this blog.

First, it IS critical that you have the right people on the bus and in the right seats. Leaders are dependent upon many others to fulfill their responsibilities, so if you haven’t focused on strengthening your leadership team to the maximum extent possible, you’re simply extending your INability to get things done.

Regular, Unbiased Feedback

Kellner also emphasizes how critical it is to provide regular, unbiased feedback to your people all along the way. (more…)

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