Manage to Lead now available as interactive, digital content powered by the leading provider for higher education textbooks.

Posted on May 9, 2013 by Peter DiGiammarino

Manage to Lead: Seven Truths to Help You Change the World is now available as an interactive digital workbook at inkling.com.

Click on the book cover icon to access its catalog entry on inkling.com. Download the free chapter to try it out on any iPad, any iPhone, or on any Mac or PC using the Chrome browser.

Manage to Lead will soon also be available in print and as an e-book at Amazon. Access from Android devices is slated for later in 2013

The interactive, digital workbook has:

Work problems,
Templates,
Animations,
Assessments,
Videos,
Graphics, and
Executive team exercises and meeting agendas.

Continue reading →

How to set up and run an Executive Incentive Compensation Program.

Posted on January 22, 2013 by Peter DiGiammarino

Each year, a well-run organization’s leadership completes a planning and budgeting process. Achievement of the resulting annual business plan is dependent on each organizational unit meeting or exceeding its established goals as part of that plan. This requires that individual leaders take ownership of their part of the plan.

The objective of the Executive Incentive Compensation Program (EICP) is to allow executives who meet or exceed annual performance goals, both financial and non-financial, to participate in the organization’s overall success. The more a given individual or group is responsible for the organization’s success, the greater their share of participation in the rewards. Participation in the program is an important career milestone.

Participants

Executives with significant scope and scale of responsibility for achieving an identifiable portion of the organization’s financial plan and who are, and who are expected to continue to be, employees in good standing are eligible to participate in the program. All staff proposed for inclusion are reviewed and approved by the Core Leadership Group.

Participation is not required. Continue reading →

How to make sure every member of your top group gets at least one thing done right.

Posted on May 30, 2012 by Peter DiGiammarino

CEOs should consider the following when assigning tasks to leadership team members:

Members of the leadership team are likely to be the most capable people in the organization and therefore among the most important to deploy optimally.

Each needs to be especially clear about what is most important for them to do and then spend the lion-share of their time doing it.

If something is important to do then someone important ought to be in charge of getting it done. Continue reading →

How to make the expectations of your group’s members explicit and open channels of communication at the same time.

Posted on May 24, 2012 by Peter DiGiammarino

The CEO of a successful organization ensures that they have an inner circle of leaders, or Core Leadership Team, who are individually and collectively clear about their relative strengths and on what the group counts on from each of them to be successful. The exercise below is a structured and straightforward way to make expectations explicit Continue reading →

How to line up what a worker is good at and likes doing with what s/he wants to do.

Posted on May 7, 2012 by Peter DiGiammarino

In order to increase the odds of engagement, happiness, and high-performance great leaders learn what people they work with like to do and what they are good at doing so they can be aligned with what they want.

Many people want to do something different than what they like and what they are good at because they believe others think that something else is more valued. Continue reading →

How to contract and govern for success with each team member.

Posted on May 1, 2012 by Peter DiGiammarino

One of the leader’s most important jobs is to get and stay clear about what it is that he or she is counting on from each team member. Once the leader is clear, the message must be communicated to the team member. Often, the leader fails to engage in a rich communication apparently in favor of assuming that team members are somehow supposed to figure out for themselves exactly what is expected of them.

Click the photo below to watch a five-minute video of a supervisor and team member making many common mistakes that make it tough for things to come out right:

The steps detailed in this post make explicit a conversation that otherwise plays-out inside of the heads of those involved. When the conversation is explicit the leader and team member get on the same page and dramatically increase the odds of high-performance and fulfilled expectations.

Contract: Get clear about what you want from each person. Continue reading →

Alternatives to installing a Chief Operating Officer (COO) at lower cost and with higher odds of success.

Posted on March 23, 2012 by Peter DiGiammarino

The responsibilities shouldered by the successful Chief Executive Officer (CEO) increase with an organization’s progress and growth in scale and complexity. The tension between the need to get things done, get others to do things, bridge the “white space” between organizational units, and to represent the organization externally (e.g. to investors, regulators, partners, suppliers, donors, the board, and the market) typically grows to the point where the CEO seeks to install a Chief Operating Officer (COO) in hopes of spreading the load across another strong executive. Continue reading →

How to increase the odds of being happy and of leading a fulfilled life.

Posted on March 11, 2012 by Peter DiGiammarino

Most of us seek in our professional affiliation what some call a state of flow or what others call happiness, exhilaration, satisfaction, or fulfillment. Along these lines see: Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and The Doom Loop System by my long time personal executive coach Dr. Dory Hollander who passed away last year and who also told me and others that the secret to a fulfilled life could be summarized in just four words (which are shared at the end of this post!). Continue reading →

Why leaders should demand that everyone in their organization never do what they are told to do.

Posted on February 21, 2012 by Peter DiGiammarino

I tell everyone who works with or for me that they are never to do something because I told them to do it. I do not want or expect people to do what I ask just because I told them something. Instead, I want them to do what they do because they understand what they are doing, they know why it makes sense to do it, they believe that what they are about to do is the wise and right thing to do, and they want to do it. Continue reading →

Intelligent Strategies. Successful Ventures.

Category Archives: Focus