Posts from — June 2009

The Quality of Thoughtfulness…
The ability to think and plan strategically is perhaps the most important single skill of the effective executive.

In a longitudinal study of leaders who, in retrospect, made the best and most effective decisions, the single quality that stood out from all others was the quality of “thoughtfulness.”

Thoughtfulness may be defined as a careful concern for the secondary consequences of each decision and each action. This is the essence of strategic thinking.

Your Most Powerful Tool…
The most powerful tool that you as an executive have to bring to bear on your work is your mind – your thinking ability.

In the face of this severe, take-no-prisoners economic downturn, far too many organizations are responding in knee-jerk reaction to the thought of holding all but the smallest of meetings.

Training budgets are slashed. Employees hunker behind their desk, hoping that no one from HR can find them or else they’re huddled around a PDA, text messaging about possible layoff scenarios, pending mergers, or hiring freezes. Performance? Productivity? I think not.

Now more than ever, managers at all levels of the organization need to do that which separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom: TALK!