Today’s question comes from a leader who is familiar with some of my past work, specifically, The Secret of Teams and Chess Not Checkers. If you are not, here’s a really quick overview: one is about the power of teams and the other is about the largely untapped potential resident in our organizations at large. The question from this leader: “How are the two ideas connected?”
A Simple Idea With Huge Potential
I have a new team at the chicken. We were chartered about six months ago. All of the players are extremely talented, and each is gifted in his or her own way. Each member also understands and embraces the power of the team.
Grow Your Leadership Team
When we began researching the best practices of High Performance Organizations, we were not surprised to discover the best leaders, when attempting to build great organizations, did not work alone. They built strong leadership teams. Leaders need capacity; leadership teams not only provide capacity, they increase results. Randy Gravitt and I wrote about this in the Chess Not Checkers Field Guide. The following is an excerpt on this critical practice.
Leaders Set The Pace
The Chess Not Checkers approach to building a High Performance Organization is built on four primary moves: Bet on Leadership, Act as One, Win the Heart and Excel at Execution. Each of these moves is enabled by specific leadership practices. Today, I begin a series on these twelve best practices. Leaders in High Performance Organizations always Set the Pace.
Today's Challenge: Team Huddles
Most sports teams have huddles. These huddles may be formal or informal, sometimes they are during the action and at other times, they are in between plays. There is a little known, and less often practiced, discipline among many successful organizations: team huddles. Today’s Challenge question: How do I make my team huddles add value?
Act As One
In the research for Chess Not Checkers, we identified four moves all High Performance Organizations make. Last week, I wrote about the first of the four: Bet on Leadership. Today, I have pulled another excerpt from the Chess Not Checkers Field Guide, which I co-authored with Randy Gravitt. Following is the introduction to the second move… Act as One.
Today's Challenge: Meetings - Does One Size Fit All? (Part 2)
Should all our team meetings follow the same structure? I began my response to this question last week. The short answer is “no.” The structure of the meeting should be determined by what you are trying to accomplish in the meeting. Based on this premise, I began to outline different types of meetings: Performance Management, Problem-solving, etc. Today, the rest of the list.
Five Ways to Spark Creativity in Your Team
This article was originally published in May 2012. Tapping into creativity is a constant challenge. I hope this updated post helps jumpstart your team.
In a business climate that can turn on a tweet, creativity is not just an asset, it’s essential. But I'm not just advocating creativity for creativity’s sake – companies need creativity to solve real business problems. Many of the pre-recession ways of doing business are no longer viable. As a seasoned leader shared with me recently, “The half-life of ideas is decreasing rapidly.” So what’s our response?
Today's Challenge: Has Your Team Been Hijacked?
Who should lead your team? The answer may not be as clear as you think. But it may be one of the most important decisions you’ll make if you are trying to build a high performance team.
One Word... Team
This is the next post in a series on single words with big implications for us as leaders. Previous posts have focused on Vision, Data, Diversity and more. Today’s word: Team. Obviously, I have a strong bias on this one since I wrote a book entitled, The Secret of Teams and the companion Field Guide.
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