Millennials (digital natives) focus on career development and advancement, as do many. 30% of the workforce changes jobs every 3 years (Source:  US Dept. of Labor). This will climax in 2021 when the “Silver Tsunami” peaks with baby boomer retirement maximizing. Kroger CEO David Dillon, “The advice I give to individuals in our company is…

Leadership effectiveness is building and maintaining a team that can outperform the competition (Hogan, Curphy, & Hogan, 1994). In order to gain this competitive advantage, US companies doubled the amount of money spent on leadership development over 15 years to $14B (Bassi, Gallager & Schroer, 1996; O’Leonard & Loew, 2012).  Leadership: 34% of executives say…

When one thinks of innovation, Google is usually the benchmark to compare against. Innovation is reflected in their culture, where they have a process that encourages collaboration, rewards ideas, moves ideas forward, and then capitalizes on these ideas. Their mission:  “Through innovation and iteration, we aim to take things that work well and improve upon…

Global leadership competencies are a rite of passage to do business in a dynamic, complex global marketplace. There are many lists of global leadership competencies – for my doctoral dissertation, I did a meta-analysis of 60 different research models. There is debate regarding whether academic institutions should provide the model, or if companies should produce…

The Forum reports that the most common ways someone loses trust are:      ·  Being inconsistent,      ·  Lacking transparency,      ·  Lacking leadership skills,      ·  Taking undue credit/passing blame,      ·  Talking behind employees’ backs,      ·  Not “walking the talk”,      ·  Poor communication/interpersonal skills….

Changing customer needs and emerging competitors demand dynamic customer value proposition changes to sustain growth. Over time, competitors can duplicate unique capabilities or service offerings resulting in market commoditization. This requires constant product/service differentiation – innovation – to enhance value.  Ask yourself:      ·  What are our product/service pain points?      ·  What…

Human behavior is complex, as are the situations in which people find themselves. This is especially so when working globally and integrating across boundaries and diversity. Global leaders process large amounts of ambiguous information, and then must translate this information into creative solutions for complex problems. The cognitive ability (and global leadership) required to run…

Many people do not take the time between emails, meetings and deliverables to pause and think. There is something to be said about an intentional attempt to synthesize, abstract and articulate the key lessons taught by an experience. This is a powerful mechanism behind learning. Learning from direct experience can be more effective if coupled…

There are three primary stages to innovation:      1.  Perform: Improve efficiencies with known approaches      2.  Expand: Broaden market segments, offerings      3.  Create: Define new business model which will reshape an industry The majority of innovation falls into Stage 1, where there are projects with inspiring names (i.e., Phoenix, Aurora), usually…

Global Leaders work with different cultures across national boundaries and varying time zones, then deal with international regulatory differences. During all of this, they are also called on to cross-pollinate better practices across all geographical units! This requires the leader to “know thyself” culturally. First, he/she figures out what is acceptable “here” – the enduring…