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Six Hats of the CEO: The Highest Value Roles
To be great the modern CEO must have tremendous influence over their organizations while in some sense seeming to do very little. How CEOs should spend their time has been the focus of my series on the...
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Business is unpredictable despite your best calculations
The quest to know all the answers down to the last decimal place sometimes gives people a false sense of surety. My dad – who taught engineering at Louisiana Tech University – was one of those...
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Are your employees misaligned? New Forbes article
I just published a new Forbes column about “How To Make Company Employees Think Like Their CEO.” Misalignment occurs when employees don’t understand the company’s overall goals and make decisions that...
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The drawbacks of cubicles
Open-plan offices make employees less productive, less happy, and more likely to get sick Earlier this week I published a post asking “Are your employees misaligned?” where I cited a story about our...
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Know the cards in poker and business
What can poker teach us about business? A lot, I have found. People are often so focused on their own game that they don’t consider the motivations, needs, and assets of the other players, to their...
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5 Responsibilities of a CEO: Own the Vision
What exactly does a CEO do? You may have asked this question whether you are a CEO or not (or maybe especially if you are a CEO!). I recently completed my blog series on the “Six hats of the CEO” or...
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When can a founder be a good CEO?
People often say that entrepreneurs who start out as CEO will need to be replaced at some point with a “professional” CEO. The thought is that the entrepreneur won’t be able to scale as the business...
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Infographic: What makes a great CEO?
The National Business Research Institute (NBRI) researched common themes across 20 of the highest profile CEOs to create this interesting infographic:
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CEO taken down by yoga pants?
Lululemon CEO Christine Day Is Stepping Down There are many different ways a CEO can lose his or her job, and in this case it looks like quality control was the driving issue (the retailer had to...
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Can having too much capital be a problem?
Have less funding than your competitors? Good! I often talk with young entrepreneurs who are struggling to raise money to keep their startup going. They are typically high achievers who have never...
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5 Responsibilities of a CEO: Provide the Proper Resources
I just published the second article for this series in my Forbes column: The Resource Allocation Dilemma Faced By CEOs Every Single Day. The premise for this blog as my readers know is that the chief...
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To Board or Not to Board: That is the question for early stage companies
Steve Blank: Don’t Give Away Your Board Seats Brad Feld: Start Building Your Board Early This week in The Wall Street Journal blog "The Accelerators," Brad Feld and Steve Blank wrote articles taking...
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5 Responsibilities of a CEO: Build the Culture
I’ve recently discussed how CEOs need to own the vision and provide the proper resources. Another key responsibility is to Build the Culture. The right culture is so important in maximizing business...
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5 Responsibilities of a CEO: Make Good Decisions
The breadth of issues new CEOs are forced to deal with on a daily basis often surprises them. One minute they are discussing a new product, the next a building lease, and then a legal issue. It is...
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5 Responsibilities of a CEO: Deliver Performance
I recently discussed how important building the culture is to maximizing performance. The CEO must also take an active role in driving that performance, which is the fifth and final key CEO...
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The SCARF model for understanding culture: Part 2
Last week I introduced the SCARF model as a way for CEOs to understand and influence their company cultures. Humans are wired to react to rewards and threats in our environments, including in social...
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DILBERT puts leadership books into context
As I prepare to publish my own book about leadership next year (The CEO Tightrope), I thought I would share this recent gem from DILBERT. Yes, Scott Adams has a point (Doesn’t he always?). In...
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The SCARF model for understanding culture: Part 3
Last week I discussed the first two elements of the SCARF model for understanding corporate culture: Status and Certainty. Here are the final three areas that can elicit a reward/threat response in...
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CEOs: Don’t hide behind the job
The Problem with Executive Isolation This article from CEO.com discusses the “dark side” of executive gatekeepers: “…it shields the senior executive from direct contact with many of the issues,...
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10 measures to a high-performance culture: 1-3
I just completed my three-part series about how CEOs can model culture and influence it using the SCARF model (employees’ perceptions of Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness and Fairness). Now...
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