One of the constants in my more than two decades of executive coaching is the desire and need to build the muscles required to develop and execute competitive and innovative strategies. It came up with a client again as recently as this month. With a few modifications, here’s the quick outline I offered him on five ways to build your strategic muscles. Have a long-term vision: Think in years and decades, not quarters and years. What is your point of view on the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to both your industry and your company? How does that analysis inform what your visi ..read more

The picture that accompanies this post was taken this morning, Thursday, April 4, 2024. It’s the photographic record of my fourth annual birthday handstand. So, this is me at age 63. My yoga teachers would certainly point out ways that I could improve my form, but I’m happy enough with this one. Honestly, if you had told me on my 43rd birthday that I’d be doing handstands on my 63rd, I would have politely told you you were nuts. Beginning my birthday with one this morning is an example of something I’ve learned through experience over the past decade – progress comes incrementally, then sudden ..read more

Over the course of this year, I’m going to develop the agendas and facilitate around a dozen strategic offsites for C-Suite executives and their senior leadership teams. Most of these will be day-long offsites for client company leadership teams to help them make sure they step back from the day-to-day swirl three times a year to set a course, assess their progress, and ensure that their time and attention are focused on the things that matter most. For three of my client companies, this is the third consecutive year that they’ve asked me to do this kind of work with them.  With all that ..read more

In a phone conversation with a senior executive last week, he greeted me by exclaiming, “Happy January 39th!” He’s not the only one that feels like the beginning of 2024 has been overstuffed with things to do and deal with. Pretty much every senior leader I work with has a plate that is overflowing with big issues – return to office initiatives, higher performance goals, huge investments, achieving operational excellence, you name it. The impact of trying to stay on top of all of that is that they end up feeling, to use the title of a book I wrote in 2014, overworked and overwhelmed. And, from ..read more

This is the time of the year when I spend a day with my C-suite clients to give them some space to get up on the balcony to consider what success will look like 12 months from now and what they and their teams need to focus on to make those outcomes more likely. While the process varies and is customized for each executive, there are some core questions that I almost always pose. Over the years, they’ve proven to be useful in helping leaders align their time and attention against the outcomes that matter most. Here are ten of the questions on my core list. While I recommend working with a coac ..read more

As the new year begins, most of us have goals or resolutions for 2024, but how many of us are working on a 10-year plan? For my first post of 2024, I want to share with you how I intend to transform my annual Life GPS® planning process into a decade spanning life roadmap. My hope is that you’ll be inspired to join me on this journey towards living a long and purposeful life. For more than two decades, my wife Diane and I have been very intentional and consistent about visualizing our goals for the coming year and outlining the routines and actions that we think will best help us achieve them ..read more

Lately, it’s felt like “I’ve got a new boss,” season in the coaching conversations I have with executives. I’ve had several of them in the past few months and there are some patterns I’ve noticed in the conversations. First, getting a new boss is anxiety inducing, especially for more senior executives. The further along you are in your career, the more likely you are to have carved out a lane for yourself and established a track record of success. Getting a new boss can be disruptive for anyone at any level but especially so for senior executives who have invested a lot of time, effort, and eg ..read more

One of the most powerful quotes I’ve ever read has stuck with me for years. It’s from Robert Greenleaf in his book, Servant Leadership, where he wrote, “The most difficult question to ask oneself is, ‘Does what I have to say improve upon the silence?’” The fact of the matter is that a lot of people in leadership roles talk too much. The impact of that is multi-faceted. Leaders who talk too much: Create needless churn in their organizations as folks scramble to turn their random musings into unintended actions. Create a dependency in the people they lead that can look like learned helplessne ..read more

How often do you stop what you’re doing to step back, pull up and look at the patterns of what’s going on in your environment, and ask questions like what’s working, what’s not, and what’s next? The most effective senior leaders I work with take the time and make the effort to regularly engage in a practice of pattern recognition and analysis. Doing that puts them ahead of competitors who don’t by identifying new opportunities to leverage and avoiding being blindsided by emerging trends. As an executive coach and advisor to senior executives in a wide range of industries, pattern recognition i ..read more

The number one complaint I hear from my senior executive coaching clients is the number of meetings they find themselves in every day. Their calendars are so racked and stacked they feel like they’re stuck in a spin cycle of conversations which leaves little to no time for strategic thinking or action. If this condition sounds familiar, here are seven simple steps you can take to get yourself out of the executive meeting spin cycle: Demand Clear Objectives: When you’re asked to attend a meeting, make a clear objective for the meeting a condition of your attendance. If the organizer can’t finis ..read more