Category: Management
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How To Handle The Painful Aspects Of Leadership During Economic Recession
I get a lot of value out of the Arete coach podcast run by Severin Sorensen, who has a background as a CEO and then as a Vistage CEO group mentor and coach (Chair). I was interviewed by Severin in May 2021 for episode 1037 on his podcast: Arete Coach Podcast 1037 Conor Neill “Powerful…
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Management is Control, Leadership is Example
Managers and Leader are very different animals. Management is about Control. Management controls 1 of 3 things: Quality Time Money Management is always about tradeoffs. If you want quality, you have to sacrifice time or money. If you want fast, you have to sacrifice quality or money. If you want cheap, you have to sacrifice…
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The Job of the CEO
This is a 30 minute interview I conducted with Waldemar Schmidt, past-CEO of a 250,000 employee global company. He shared insights about the role of the CEO: How to get the CEO role How to be a good CEO How to end your time as CEO and What to do next. Watch the Interview View…
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Leadership: First, Control your Time
Yesterday I shared an interview with Christoph Magnussen reviewing lessons from #EOLA16. Here’s another smidgin of wisdom from Entrepreneurs’ Organisation Leadership Academy 2016.  In this video, Rich Mulholland, an entrepreneur from South Africa shares his reflections on two key moments during the leadership academy:  A re-enactment of the Martin Luther King “I Have a Dream” speech,…
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Kung Fu is Not a Science
Physics is a science. Geology is a science. Chemistry is a science. What is Science? “Science: (from Latin scientia, meaning “knowledge”) is a systematic enterprise that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. In an older and closely related meaning, “science” also refers to a body of knowledge…
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The End of the Knowledge Worker
I hear that we are in the economy of the knowledge worker. Nope, we skipped that. We were supposed to be shifting from the manufacturing worker to the knowledge worker. All the big gurus told us of this shift. They tell me that it has been going on for 20 years. The only problem is that…
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Some Reflections On Good Strategy
What is Good Strategy? These points come from my notes from listening to a lecture by Prof. Pat Gibbon of UCD Smurfit Business School in Dublin during the Executive Edge day in May 2014. Good strategy begins with a clear diagnosis (widely accepted) of the real current condition of the business. If there is nothing…
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The 5 Biggest Reasons why New Hires Fail
I came across a study reported in Mark Murphy’s book Hiring for Attitude.  (Here is a summary of Hiring for Attitude [pdf]).  The findings are based on 5,247 interviews.  Mark and his team categorised the top five reasons why new hires failed (were fired, asked to leave, received disciplinary action or significantly negative performance reviews). The 5 Biggest Reasons…
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Leading Teams: The 5 Styles of Managing People
I was teaching a seminar recently and a young film producer told me “I am not a good manager”. Â I asked him why he believed this. Â He described a recent series of disasters that he had overseen with his team. I asked him “who are the people on your team?”. He said his cousin helped…
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Leaders Go First. The First Steps on Learning Leadership.
Leadership: You Have to Go First. I love this little Dilbert storyline from Scott Adams: Employee: “I find it rather demotivating that you never praise me for a job well done.” Boss: “You’ve never done a job well.” Employee: “That’s because I’m demotivated.” Boss: “You have to go first.” Employee: “Wouldn’t that make me the…