Story Ideas
Promote Strategic Thinking With Staff. As they face a challenging economic climate, scores of businesses are experiencing a downturn in profits and a reduction in productivity. Struggling to overcome this situation many companies are seeking a strategy that will help them to survive and even thrive in the months and years ahead. Leibner and Mader can speak about three specific ways managers can encourage and promote strategic thinking among their staff, discuss the pitfalls of creating strategy without buy-in and suggest a four-step process for creating strategic alignment and engagement.
Are You a Narcissistic Boss and Don't Even Know It? A recent survey from the Florida State University College of Business found that having a narcissistic boss creates a toxic environment for virtually everyone who comes in contact with that individual. Leibner and Mader can speak to specific ways that leaders may be unknowingly behaving in narcissistic ways at work and discuss four specific and proven ways to create a culture of ownership and engagement.
How Coming to Consensus May be Hurting Your Company. Most meetings are built around an agenda focused on a series of specific items to be discussed and one or two key issues to come to consensus on. But many managers confuse consensus with alignment and commitment. The authors explain the critical difference between building consensus and coming to alignment. In addition, they offer three specific ways managers and leaders can retool their meetings to avoid the traps of consensus and create commitment instead.
Four Steps To a Successful Strategy. The effectiveness of any strategy is directly proportional to the level of ownership, commitment and accountability among the executive team. Any strategy is only as good as people’s commitment to fulfill it. Leibner and Mader clarify the four steps necessary to create total strategic commitment and alignment.
Stop Prioritizing! And Start Being More Effective. Getting your priorities straight seems to be the obvious solution to dealing with the overwhelm, stress and burden of too many commitments, too little time and scarce resources. But Leibner and Mader say there is a hidden pitfall with prioritizing, which perpetuates the frustration, fatigue and endless lists of incomplete items that occupy most managers days. Instead, they offer an alternative system based on a network of commitments that are organized around “promising” rather than "prioritizing.”
In a Down Economy, Cutting Back Requires Adding Something Back In. When times get tough, most executives move to cut costs, reduce resources and shore up the company savings. And while focusing on financial issues in the short-term is important, Leibner and Mader say it’s often done at the sacrifice of the long-term health of the organization. The authors speak to the critical importance of leaders infusing the company culture with confidence and hope, as things are being taken away. They suggest five things managers can do on a monthly basis to elevate employee morale and loyalty.
The Three Myths of Strategic Planning: Most leaders mistakenly believe that the criteria for a meaningful strategy is the amount and accuracy of the research and market analysis that goes into it. But the research done by Leibner and Mader shows that the levels of alignment and engagement around a strategy are far more important than how logical or well researched it is. The authors refute four popular strategic myths and specify the practical steps required to develop a working strategy within 60-90 days.