I learned an important lesson at my last CEO forum. I was having a conversation with an influential executive at one of the world’s top consulting firms who uses his voice and influence to promote women. One thing he said that kind of blew my mind was that he felt privileged to be invited into the conversations by women about increasing women in the…
Company culture isn’t an afterthought. It happens whether leaders choose to design it deliberately, or because they didn’t. Either way, culture is – and it can be directly measured by how much time, energy, communication and resources, a CEO is willing to give it. Someone I think is an amazing culture builder is Raj Singh, CEO of Accolade. I asked him something along the lines…
Much of the coaching work I do focuses on the ways in which executives are standing in their own way, and how we can implement behavioral changes to make them more successful. In fact, I’d go further to say, any of the work we do, typically starts there, because it’s that damaging stuff that limits success, creativity and growth. Now consider trying to change…
In another sold out CEO Forum, three, amazing CEOs–Ken Alterman, SAVERS/Value Village, Kimberly Harris, Puget Sound Energy and Kevin Klock, Talking Rain–shed light on their biggest challenges, mistakes and takeaways from leading a multi-generational workforce. One of the reasons I chose this topic is because a former colleague of mine said that all this talk about Millennials and their influence is making her feel…
If you missed our conversation yesterday, I am so so sorry for you. It was unbelievable. Yesterday, three amazing purpose-driven leaders: Jim Weber, CEO, Brooks Running, Darrell Cavens, CEO, zuiliy and Darryl Rawlings, CEO, Trupanion shared their insights on how they discovered their true purpose - and how that transcends their leadership and impacts everything they do. Here are their summary points and the…
The house was packed on February 4th during a rapid fire discussion on why more companies don’t view employee engagement as a strategic initiative. Despite the research (not to mention common sense) showing that engaged employees provide higher service, which leads to higher customer satisfaction results in increased sales and causes high profit and ultimately higher returns for shareholders, it's still difficult subject matter…
“Well-being” rolls my mind back to the sidebar headlines on the covers of my mom’s Redbook or Better Homes and Gardens magazines circa 1979. In yellow font, they screamed “3 Easy Steps to Improving Your Well-Being.” And like most things, ‘well-being’ became so passé that it’s hip and cool, especially as it relates to employee engagement. An employee’s well-being has to do with how…
In my trimestral email, I described my theory on what inspired the great navigators, Da Gama, Magellan and Columbus, to secure a boat, rally a crew and sail off into the sunset to see if, at the very least, they’d stumble upon some sort of discoverable land before falling off the edge of the world. I asked the leaders who received the email: How…
For those of you that have been wondering and inquiring, I'm so pleased to finally share the big news! Here’s the 2016 line up for my “From the CEO’s Perspective” forums at the World Trade Center, Seattle. If you were lucky enough to attend our last forum in 2015, you heard the amazing stories from culture creators: Scott Svenson, CEO of MOD Pizza; Raj…
