The Best Decision Isn’t Always as Obvious as It Seems Your success at work is correlated to the quality of your relationships. Easy right? It’s common sense. You might even be wondering who doesn’t already know this. The challenge isn’t about attitude though. You’re right, nobody likes the as%ho^e — Don’t be that person. The challenge comes when you have to choose between being right or making the right choice. The Problem My team and I had been working on a large project that had been pushed back multiple times over the years. The market finally got to a point where the problem in the field had to be addressed. We dusted off our files and started looking at the information we had built 3 years prior. We made our plans for what needed to be refreshed and how we would go about it. We cut through the project quickly. The team had matured a lot in that time and those roadblocks from the past were mere pebbles on the road this time around. Cue the problem. The fundamental assumptions...

 Why You Need to Rethink Your Understanding Most people don't understand leadership. They relate it to a title or position. Leadership is not about power. You are not superior to others when you lead. Leadership is about people. I write a lot about leadership. It turns some people off. It is one of those areas that has been over-marketed. Every day you see people posting platitudes about it. It can get annoying. Who wants to learn leadership from someone unless they have done something great? The paradox is this. A lot of incredibly success people are terrible leaders. Some of the most amazing leaders are people that you will never hear of. Being a successful leader is not about arbitrary results. What one person considers successful, another will think it fell short. Real leadership comes down to how you shape other people. What is Leadership? This is the best way you should think about leadership: A process of social influence in which a person can enlist the aid and support of o...

 The Biggest Dichotomy of Leadership You can never know everything. There's no point pretending that you do. Leadership is about trust. It is your responsibility to guide your team to achieve the goals that have been set. To draw out the strengths of each person, supporting each other to win. This is one of my favourite quotes. It comes from the book "The Dichotomy of Leadership" by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin. Every leader must be willing and able to lead, but just as important is a leader’s ability to follow. A leader must be willing to lean on the expertise and ideas of others for the good of the team. Leaders must be willing to listen and follow others, regardless of whether they are junior or less experienced. It's empowering when people feel heard. Knowing that they can share their idea or perspective and that the person in charge is listening.  What's equally enabling is for them to know that you are supporting them. That you trust them to make decisions. ...

Building for Success on the Back of Change Usually when people think of 3 words that have a huge impact on your life they have more of a romantic connotation.  I suppose both phrases carry with them the idea of a change. I wrote a post yesterday on LinkedIn related to my field of work. I have been in Logistics and Last Mile delivery for 15 years now. Needless to say, I’m pretty comfortable in my thinking and confident in my understanding. I took a strong position against Ultrafast delivery and presented my case. The posted ended with me saying “Share your thoughts, change my mind”. There was nothing cheeky about it. It was a true desire and an honest comment. This was a response someone made on that post: Love this example of a strong belief weakly held, inviting real discussion and co-discovery. So rare. It surprised me. I have been like this for as long as I can remember. It’s a fundamental pillar of my leadership style and I am not sure I could be different if I tried. I ab...

 How your ability to hold both positions sets you apart as a leader Nobody wants to follow an asshole.  Leadership is not about your authority, it’s not about telling people what to do. Your position doesn’t make you better than anyone else. You’re probably thinking, how they hell can you be “unyielding” as a leader while still being open minded … these are not the same. Unyielding — adjective unable to bend or be penetrated under pressure; hard: trees so unyielding that they broke in the harsh north winds. not apt to give way under pressure; inflexible; firm: her unyielding faith. People follow those who take charge. Who are confident. Who default to action and make decisions. When leading a team, they expect you to be able to provide this structure, to provide them the context and the guidelines that they need to operate. How then can you mix these two ideas to be a kick ass leader while delivering results? It’s all in where you apply each idea. You have to be unyi...

 How Transferring Ownership Will Make You and Your Team Stronger I've found that the ideal span of control is 5 to 8 direct reports. This allows you enough time to have at least one deep conversation once week with each member of your team. Anything higher than this is hard for people to manage effectively when the stress rises and events go off plan. High performing teams are those where there is trust going up, down and across the structure. This also means that as the leader, you need to be able to step back, let go and disappear. Before that happens however, you need to set the stage. Leadership is not about sitting on the sidelines and barking orders. Real leadership is action and getting your hands dirty. Two things to always keep in mind: Never ask your team to do anything that you wouldn't do People aren't working for you, they are working with you Your job as a leader is simple. You create the example, you provide the guidance. You support the team as they support ...

  Desirability Feasibility Viability Simple right? These three things are what make up the Balanced Breakthrough Model. The model highlights the core requirements to become a successful innovation. Here is a quick breakdown of each element: Desirability - Is there an actual need for this idea? What specifically is the problem you are solving for people? Feasibility - Can you actually build / implement the solution? How hard is it with your current context? Viability -  What is the investment required to create the solution? Is it really worth it? Can you derive long term value from the product or service you develop? A lot of this may seem obvious, however so many people look to invent or innovate something and then start looking for the problem. Trying to create the context or need for your product to be required is never a good place to be in. What gets interesting here is when you factor in timing, and this is something that A LOT of people miss. The three elements above ...

  There is such a shift happening with new world thinking. How we approach problems and where we need to apply focus and effort. Provoke is a great read that helps push your strategic thinking. What you will see from this book is the major differentiator that separates start-ups from established brands, and why some brands are able to adapt while others seem to fall off the cliff. Provoke is all about how you as a leader, need to embrace taking action versus the slow burn that is so prevalent in our organizations as leadership is focused on year over year results and protecting the bonus. Here are some key takeaways for me that will help you and your team have more success. Accepting a Trend and Properly Understanding How Mature it is Evaluate the trend that you are seeing and label as "if" or "when". Leaders often miss an opportunity because they either miss it, deny it, over analyze it or respond poorly A correctly labelled "if" vs "when" trend...

  Life is simple, get the things you want that will make you happy. If only it was that easy. In a world of social media and information overload, it's easy to feel like you are falling behind. How can everyone have so much going for them and I'm not? The truth is, what we see is only what people choose to share; we are craving acceptance and validation. For most people, it's a culture shock going into the workforce. We move from trying to fit in, developing friendships and finding our place in communities to a world that focuses on accomplishments and impact to punch our ticket. This causes new entrants to the workforce to develop pleasing habits. We want to be liked, we want the validation, and because of this we fall into a mode of doing the job / doing what we are told and will start limiting of thinking and focus for the future. It's said that the biggest benefit someone gets from higher education is "learning how to learn", as a general statement, I agre...

  Do you know what I did last week? This will sound crazy and you might think I need help (honestly maybe I do!). I have been struggling to manage my time and responsibilities lately. Not so much in terms of knowing what I need to do, more balancing what I need to do with what I want to do. What had been happening was that too many things were pushing off, "Oh, I'll get to that tomorrow" or I was allowing myself to think that "I don't have time for that". The consequence was that every few days, things would stack up and the biggest place that was suffering was my sleep. Now, I appreciate off the bat that might sound lazy AF to some people. Thinking "Is this guy really whining because he's not able to sleep ... come on dude". I get it, our society has created a culture around how much you can do on the fewest hours of sleep. I bought into that, big time ... hell I was captain of the team. At one point in my life I was flying 50-100 times a year...

  While reading today, I came across the following comment: Is a high service level necessarily bad? No. However, if your service levels do not vary by type of customer or if your customers are not willing to pay for better service, you are potentially over servicing your customers. Our experience across industries shows that companies seldom segment their service offerings, thereby allowing all of their customers access to the same high level of service. While working in the food industry, responsible for the organization's direct delivery (B2B), this topic was an area that we started to explore more and more.  One comment from a former peer who I respect greatly was that, in logistics, you can do anything as long as you are willing to pay for it. This was true then and it remains true to this day. As you begin to optimize and improve your operations, you soon realize what you are actually providing to customers. You look at what you have to do, what your processes are, what ...

In a world built on relationships, meetings matter. They are important and really help bring people together to achieve common goals. Since meetings are important, it's critical that you know how to run one, properly. First and foremost. Make sure you know what the meeting is for: • Discussion / Exploration • Decision • Information sharing Next, make sure that you actually have the right people at the meeting based on your intention, and more importantly, make sure THEY know why they have been asked to participate. Third and most important, respect people's TIME. Everyone is busy, has a lot on the go and attending meetings takes away time from other things they could / should be working on. To respect people's time, manage your meeting. Start on time, end on time and make sure that you drive the meeting in such a way that you will cover what needs to be covered during the stated time. Don't allow the meeting to go off the rails and then simply think that you can book an...

Coming from an operations world, you are always on the go. While you might work 8 or 10 hours a day, the other parts of your business and/or your responsibility are usually going 24 hours a day. This is one of the most challenging things for people to manage as they get into an operations world. At first you simply believe that you will do more hours, get ahead of the curve and then you will be able to slow down and relax. Unfortunately it doesn't work that way. The more you get accomplished, the more 'opportunities' you seem to have. Added to this, you start to deal with the matrix above more often then you realize. The biggest trap that people fall into with their work and responsibilities is not taking the time to understand where each task / problem / responsibility fits. The other major challenge is that we often take on what 'seems' to be urgent and important ... for other people and not necessarily ourselves. With so many people working from home right now, I...

Today's post was inspired by the following quote from the book "The Dichotomy of Leadership": "Every leader must be willing and able to lead, but just as important is a leader’s ability to follow. A leader must be willing to lean on the expertise and ideas of others for the good of the team. Leaders must be willing to listen and follow others, regardless of whether they are junior or less experienced." One of the best ways a leader can truly lead the team is to also follow them. It is extremely empowering for your team to know that you not only listen, but trust them to make important decisions and that you are going to have their back and let them take charge. Some people think that being the leader means you make all the of the decisions all of the time, and if you think your idea is best, to just pull rank and make it happen. Like everything in life, it is better when people CHOOSE.  The autonomy and flow it provides your team is extremely importa...

   Ego is one of the hardest things to deal with as a new manager. You are in a new situation, you are most likely leading people for the first time, you are probably a bit younger ... and you just feel like you HAVE to prove yourself. This kinda makes sense right? You were obviously promoted because you knew your stuff and were really good at your old job, so now it MUST be your job to make sure everyone knows how good you are. WRONG! This is the number one mistake most new managers make. I totally get why, we have created this hierarchy in our corporate structures that makes people believe a good supervisor = a good manager = a good director = a good VP. This. Is. Completely. Untrue. The reality is that it takes different skills to be a good leader; and excellence at one level does not automatically mean excellence at the next. To be a good leader, you have to always be trying to check your ego. Yes you are smart, you probably have good ide...