There’s a significant shift developing as GenXers and Millennials take on leadership positions. Employees now want creative ownership—an expectation that contrasts sharply with traditional views on leadership. “Today, people believe that their value is in their ideas and creativity, not in their ability to be agents for someone else’s vision,”

What is our purpose? Who do we serve? What drives us? As society shifts its view of businesses from engines of profit to engines for good, more and more organizations are soul-searching for a purpose. Over the past decade, the move toward stakeholder capitalism has changed how businesses see themselves

When Lisa Flanary, executive coach and strategic planning partner at CO2 Partners, began her work with a CO2 to client to redefine their  mission, vision, and values, company leadership couldn’t locate any documentation about the company purpose. No one, from entry-level employees to company leaders, could recall the company’s guiding

As people grow used to a volatile and fast-paced world, executives’ concerns surrounding organizational change management have shifted. Old worries about resistance and intractability have been replaced by the imperative to lead through near-perpetual transformation.    “Nobody resists change anymore because we’re always changing,” explains Carmen Liefeld, Leadership Coach at

Every company needs a corporate purpose. In fact, long-term business viability depends on it. Millennials and Generation Z, who together make up nearly half of the full-time workforce in the U.S., want the companies they work for and buy from to have a purpose greater than profit or shareholder value. 

By: Gary Cohen If you consider that when I was in college in the early 1980s, the world population was 3 Billion people. Today the world population is 7 Billion. While death by disease, war, and famine are down significantly the complexity has more than doubled. Take a look at

Business Succession Planning: When to Start? Harry Levinson, who ran the well-respected Menager Clinic for Senior Executives, once asked the new president of Brandeis Univesity, “Whom have you chosen as your successor?” Another member of the faculty became quite agitated by Harry’s question, considering it was the first day of the

Corporate Culture ‘The single greatest tool in any leader’s toolkit is culture,” Mike Harper, former chairman and CEO of ConAgra, explained to me during an interview at his home. Culture is like the water in the aquarium; the fish don’t even know it’s there and yet it affects everything, and

“The human mind gets creased into a way of seeing things.” -Antoine Lavoisier, Reflections on Phlogiston Kripkean Dogmatist If you are showing up as a Kripkean Dogmatist then you treat any new information that disagrees with your position as irrelevant. The moment you know that what you are hearing, reading

Significant others are, in effect, Secret Business Partners. They can act as sounding boards. They can ask questions others may be too afraid to ask–ones that often begin with “Why?” They can also use their knowledge of their partner’s strengths, failings, and personal history to add context and make judgments.

Jobs at risk for automation An Oxford University study conducted by Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne suggests that 47 percent of US jobs are at high risk due to computerization; they could be replaced in the next decade or two. This study was based on a detailed study

“A strategy is a plan that creates sustainable competitive advantage and allows an organization to perform over time, even in the face of a changing environment.”  — Jimmy Brown Your strategic plan should do all three things Brown suggests: 1. Create a sustainable competitive advantage; 2. Allow you to perform

“A strategy is a plan that creates sustainable competitive advantage and allows an organization to perform over time, even in the face of a changing environment.”  — Jimmy Brown Your strategic plan should do all three things Brown suggests: 1. Create a sustainable competitive advantage; 2. Allow you to perform

As an entrepreneur, you can involve yourself in just about any decision when the company is in its early stage. As the company grows, however, it it becomes harder stay on top of every issue. You do your best to prioritize and manage your involvement, but at a certain point

Each business is susceptible to many hazards, toxins, and contaminates. These threats may come in the form of legislation, litigation, regulations, competition, supplier dependability, financing, etc. What threats are you particularly vulnerable to? Have you discovered a telltale sign that can provide you early warning before one of these threats

Educational Rubrics Educational institutions have long struggled with performance evaluation of employees. They have succeeded, however, with developing some useful rubrics to evaluate the performance of students. Rubrics provide a vertical set of performance criteria against horizontal measures of effectiveness. They tend to work best when the evaluation is complex

Educational Rubrics Educational institutions have long struggled with performance evaluation of employees. They have succeeded, however, with developing some useful rubrics to evaluate the performance of students. Rubrics provide a vertical set of performance criteria against horizontal measures of effectiveness. They tend to work best when the evaluation is complex

Today I believe a Mission Statements should optimally be 8 to 10 words in length. I did not always believe this to be true, as you will see from the example below from my first company. Today, I would call this a statement of belief, rather than a mission statement.

If you want to break a dollar without giving change, you will have to rip it in pieces. If you do that, you will need to find someone willing to accept your new form of currency. And if they accept it, they will have to persuade someone else to accept

As CEO, you should interview as many of the people joining your organization as possible. As the organization grows, you will have to be more selective–interviewing only those who will have the greatest impact on the business. But you shouldn’t stop interviewing. Interviewing is one of the greatest tools you

A study by Erik Altmann, associate professor of psychology, found that brief interruptions doubled the error rate for participants performing a difficult sequential task. The research was done at the University of Michigan on behalf of the US Navy, and it has widespread implications. “So why did the error rate

The starting point in most of my coaching is teaching leaders how to lean back. They need to erase their whiteboards to make white space in their lives to tackle the really big things I have been hired to help them achieve. Without this white space, they don’t have enough

    Exit and Succession planning are big topics on our Tuesday show with Tom Siders and Jeff Johnson. Gary Cohen and Rick Diamond from CO2 Partners Join Jeff Johnson on The Business Forum Show. Have you ever heard the amazing story behind ACI Telecentrics, Inc and its founding partners, Rick

When doing a strategic plan, you may be faced with mountains of data. How you use the data from many different surveys is critical to the outcome of your strategic plan. You will have to sort what is relevant from what is irrelevant. Many of you may already have your

In order to help clients understand what a mission statement is and how to create one, CO2 Partners has put together this Mission Statement Video. The mission statement is our statement of purpose. It describes why we exist as an organization. It tells us what we exist to do and

  A dear friend of mine came over a few months ago for a glass of wine and asked me, “What’s the half-life of a strategic plan?” She’d just completed one with her team. Everyone voted to implement it immediately, and yet one executive began to stray from it within

Your leadership and management skills can be dramatically improved by taking a page out of the motorcycling playbook. This past weekend I took a training course in how to drive a motorcycle from Rider Academy in St. Paul, Minnesota. To say I stretched myself would be an understatement. I was left fatigued at the end

While generating ideas comes easily for entrepreneurs, discerning which ideas to implement and which to discard does not usually come as easily.

This video will provide a clear overview of the executive coaching Process

How do you stifle innovation? What roadblocks has your organization put in place to ensure that innovation is stifled? That is not a rhetorical question. Whether you know it or not, you have put in place, by design or circumstance, roadblocks to innovation. Maybe your argument stems from “regulatory” requirements, cultural bias,

Stop it:  A message from Bob Newhart We so often hear about all of the things that we must start doing and rarely hear about the things that we need to stop doing to become better leaders. Here is a clip of Bob Newhart playing the part of a psychologist.

Optimism vs. Pessimism: Know where you and your team members sit along the optimism/pessimism spectrum. Use that information to be accurate and to win.

Job satisfaction can be increased by adapting the Motivation-Hygiene Theory both personally and organizationally. This explains how you can love and hate your job at the same time.

Becoming a Leader:  Challenge #8–Encourage Dissent During a period in the late 1990’s, Korean Air had more plane crashes than any other airline in the world.  Yet, their pilots (and co-pilots) were impeccably trained.  So, why the rash of crashes? Ultimately it was determined that a culture that didn’t honor dissent, but

Employee Engagement, Leadership, and Business Results are highly correlated–according to Gallup research done by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman, authors of First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently. Buckingham and Coffman came up with twelve questions that help determine the degree of employee engagement. How

Sense of urgency declines as organizations grow A sense of urgency is often lost as an organization comes to scale. The more the bureaucracy grows, the harder it is for the organization to keep moving forward fast. A syrupy molasses coats the gears. As a leader, you wake up every

Leadership Efficiency can be costly to the sustainability of an organization. When you strive for efficiency you can lose your sense of purpose.

In coaching leaders I find one of the most difficult areas for them to overcome is firing one of their direct reports. Over the years I have come to see six clear barriers for them to overcome to move forward on a decision that they have been avoiding. This post

‘Culture eats strategy for breakfast’ it is said. When you think of creativity, you often think of ways to promote it! This post looks at the many ways that your organizations culture can prevent it from ever happening.

Leaders don’t enjoy firing people. They may feel relief after they’ve done so, but rarely joy. Even Donald Trump seems to feel a measure of regret when he says, “you’re fired!” Leaders want to inspire their team members to improve and become success stories. They want to find a way—perhaps

The 5-15 reports is a simple concept. The report should take no more than 5 minutes to read and no more than 15 minutes to write.

It’s the age of multitasking and efficiency, so leaders try to pair celebrations with meetings and other work-oriented activities. Unfortunately, these celebrations feel halfhearted and an awful lot like work. Instead of improving morale, these half-celebrations can drain or kill it. Draw a line of separation between celebrations and work.

If you’re like the average American, you likely see 16,000 brands in any given day. That’s a lot of competing images. No wonder so much attention is given to make logos eye-catching. Want to know what got eyes to stop or pause in 2011? Bill Gardner of LogosLounge discovered the

Leadership Development can involve shifting mindsets–from resource-building to resourcefulness. When resources are not limited, dramatic change rarely happens because there is no imperative or imminent risk. As a result, resource-building leaders often miss great opportunities for organizational and personal growth. When resources get thin, leaders tend to adopt a resourcefulness

Meritocracies holds a lot of appeal for CEOs and business leaders. Most believe in giving greater responsibility and position to those who have earned the right based on intelligence, effort, achievements, and education. Is it any wonder that Atlas Shrugged (a story of meritocracy by Ayn Rand) is the single

When you build a successful company, department, NGO, or team, you build upon successes. It’s tricky to reproduce success, however, because many decisions were both context- and time-bound. Had you made those same decisions with different people, in different circumstances, or at another time period in the growth of your

When helping clients with strategic plans and business model generation, I encourage them to choose one of three paths. These paths are clearly and effectively outlined by Fred Wiersema and Michael Treacy in The Discipline of Market Leaders: Choose Your Customers, Narrow Your Focus, Dominate Your Market: 1) Operational Excellence

When helping clients with strategic plans and business model generation, I encourage them to choose one of three paths. These paths are clearly and effectively outlined by Fred Wiersema and Michael Treacy in The Discipline of Market Leaders: Choose Your Customers, Narrow Your Focus, Dominate Your Market: 1) Operational Excellence

Many years ago, Dana Olson and I went to a very elegant Chinese restaurant in New York. It was an intimate space with a clear view of the kitchen. We could see the shrimp we’d ordered being tossed into the wok. The shrimp must have been alive because they screamed,

“Capital in some form or other will always be needed.” Ghandi “Money won’t create success, the freedom to make it will.” Nelson Mandela

This video deserves to be thought about as it relates to sharing a vision. Watch the video and see if you are clear on what the vision is and how it is communicated. Is your vision for yourself or your organization this strong? What would you need to do to

“Where observation is concerned, chance favors only the prepared mind” – Louis Pasteur It turns out that the number one Key Performance Indicator (KPI) for a sales organization is Revenue to Face Time.  In general, the more time a sales person is in front of clients and prospects, the more that person

I have the opportunity as an executive coach to sit in on different conferences around the world. In reflecting on the speeches of key executives, it amazes me how out of touch they seem to be with their rank and file. It’s not always obvious at first because they’ve rehearsed most of

You hear about “political capital” almost every night on the news. You only wish Washington D.C.’s movers and shakers could pay down the national debt with this type of capital. Sadly, it seems to do the opposite—add to our debt by clearing red tape and authorizing more spending. “Political capital” exists

Big ideas are terrific. There’s no harm in thinking big. Acting prematurely on these ideas is the problem. Many visionaries move from start to finish in their minds quickly and skip many of the steps in between necessary for execution. That’s how they wind up trying to boil the ocean.

When you visit lots of different organizations, as executive coaches do, you observe conversations that seem to be in new, arcane languages. That’s because corporate teams and business partnerships frequently use corporate shorthand. They know each other well and want to communicate efficiently, hence the acronyms and code words. What’s

On a recent trip to Italy, I visited the Coliseum, the Parthenon, and the statues collected by the Medici family. While there’s plenty of important and successful businesses and entrepreneurs in Italy, most of us, when we speak of Italy’s greatness, speak in the past tense. And Italy spends a

Click to hear: ASTD TCC Podcast Gary Cohen Interview Company leaders today face new and increasingly complex problems. Most of these problems are intractable, if not, in the end, problems without real, lasting solutions. It is an extremely frustrating situation for today’s leaders, who are accustomed to finding answers and

The cobblestones were slick from the mist as we walked beside the canals to see James Taylor play at an intimate gathering in San Marco Piazza, Venice. Had the weather stayed as it had been, the stars would have been sparkling like pin holes through a sheet. Instead, we were

I was at a party enjoying festivities around the pool and sitting next to an IT Manager from a Fortune 100 company. When he learned about my vocation as an Executive Coach, he shared with me his frustration with his company’s HR department. For a few years he’d wanted to find

I was at a party enjoying festivities around the pool and sitting next to an IT Manager from a Fortune 100 company. When he learned about my vocation as an Executive Coach, he shared with me his frustration with his company’s HR department. For a few years he’d wanted to find

My daughter and I recently finished a two-month “24” marathon, watching Jack Bauer rescue the world. This led to our conversation while hiking in Colorado State Park about how often terrorist attacks are thwarted without our knowledge–for security reasons or simply to keep the public from being any more stressed out

I just spent a week at a hotel in San Francisco that was new and lovely, and yet, when I was trying to work I just could not engage. Some spaces–hotels, offices, you name it–lend themselves to providing energy, focus, and action while others seem to just disengage me entirely.

Once you learn and successfully employ a specific process, you stop exploring alternatives with a child’s eyes. You turn your attention to other matters. Eventually, the daily management of your processes overwhelms your time and attention, such that you rarely if ever adopt a new process. You stay with the

In a new documentary called The Interrupters. Live at Aspen Ideas Festivals interviews one of the main Interrupters. Eddie describes the work as dangerous and rewarding even though he fails more than he succeeds. This is necessary work and has become the character of those neighborhoods. All systems need to

If you want to change the organization’s culture—from blaming to learning—start by celebrating when a team member declares an error or failure. Make sure to celebrate the awareness and not the failure itself. Errors aren’t desired, but they do present learning opportunities. Celebrate learning from failures. The revelation of an

We use to have our financials on the third business day of the following month, but before I left the business we were aiming for the last day of the current month. Today, banks can do it much quicker. If you are waiting more than five business days to get your financial information, you are

We use to have our financials on the third business day of the following month, but before I left the business we were aiming for the last day of the current month. Today, banks can do it much quicker. If you are waiting more than five business days to get your financial information, you are

Leaders are trained to identify when revenues, EBITDA, number of new customers, and retention of customers are up or down. They are less likely to receive training in how to identify values conflicts. Values conflicts can have a tremendous impact on employee engagement, employee retention, and alignment. They can take

If a loyal employee is no longer contributing in a meaningful way—not because of lack of effort, but because of an inability to adapt to a new direction or new methods—the leader will try training, coaching, mentoring, or stretching assignments. If those fail to work, the leader has two choices:

In this age of information, it’s so easy to get distracted by a comment, idea, book, motivational speaker, blogger, etc. Before giving in to a distraction, ask, “How does this support our strategy?” You may find yourself with an extra ten hours a week if you begin asking this question and

Many organizations have cut back on people, benefits, and professional development over the past few years. As the market heats up, and it is, those companies must correct those behaviors soon or they are likely to lose their best talent–according to a survey recently completed by Right Management. Right Management is

On Friday, my wife woke the girls and me up at 4:30 am! This is not an unusual time for her to awake, but it is about two hours early for the rest of the family. She flipped on the TV in our master bedroom and made us tea and crumpets. She

Many organizations are finding it difficult to coordinate social media enterprise wide, Radian6 has introduced a listening post and interaction product that may change the game for your organization!

This is a video on Facebook’s Brand Interaction Study. If you want to understand what is happening in social media and how it can have an impact on your organization. You will want to watch this…

When you think of your business are you acting as the smartest person in the room or are you asking your customers what they need. Watch this video to get some insight into the difference.

There’s a fine line between tenacity and stubbornness. After a period of time, if your idea doesn’t start to move on its own, with gravity, it may be time to move on. Yes, there are many historical examples of people who kept slogging their ideas forward and upward and eventually

Big risks are generally for the young—when fewer livelihoods are at stake and when there’s plenty of time and energy to rebuild or start something new from scratch. If you’ve already spent considerable time and energy building your business, if you’ve already had your share of entrepreneurial adrenaline rushes, don’t

You’ve heard “What’s the worst that could happen?” It’s a valuable question, encouraging the asker and responder to demystify and evaluate the risks involved with making a certain decision. The converse, “What’s the best that could happen?” has value, too.

Traction is written for a very specific target market. It’s for entrepreneurial business owners and leadership teams of small to midsize companies who want help and are open-minded, frustrated, willing to be vulnerable, open, real, and authentic. As it pertains to that market, there really isn’t a book written for

How would you like to go on a Mediterranean cruise? A week in Vegas? Or maybe enjoy rounds of golf wrapped up with luxurious massages. No-we’re not talking about honeymoons, but rather, team building trips taken by some very fortunate employees. Find out about 10 of the most incredible company-sponsored

OODA stands for: Observe Orient Decide Act Colonel John Boyd, Military Strategist,  created this model once he considered decision making for military strategy happened in recurring loops. The idea is that when moving to action you first observe the battlefield or what ever area you are operating in. Once you

OODA stands for: Observe Orient Decide Act Colonel John Boyd, Military Strategist,  created this model once he considered decision making for military strategy happened in recurring loops. The idea is that when moving to action you first observe the battlefield or what ever area you are operating in. Once you

Business Model Generation caught my eye in a book store in December – It is rare I find myself in book stores anymore given how many books are sent to me as a blogger and my preference in reading on Kindle or IPad. I think it was the graphic design

“A word is dead when it is said some say, I say it just begins to live that day” – Emily Dickenson When you work on a strategic plan – even if you keep them as short as we do at CO2 Partners, to one page each word you choose

When is something so baked into your culture that you no longer need to put it into your strategic plan? This post will put some light on this question or it may create more thinking than answers. When your strategy is so ingrained into the culture do you still need

The Other Side of Innovation the authors demonstrate their absolute knowledge of an area that many organizations need more of, innovation! They have been studying over past decade innovation within established organizations. In the process they have compiled perhaps the most extensive library of innovation case studies in the world.

Dan Pink asks us to look past the outmoded view of what motivates people, like the carrot and stick, to more cutting edge research about personal growth and development. Recently, when working with clients to bring the strategic planning process out of the board room and into mail room, we

”The real voyage of discovery consists of not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” – Marcel Proust As an executive coach you are parachuted into different organizations to work with leaders. One of the first questions I ask an organizational leader is what is your vision. Many

I have read many books on the subject of applied behavioral economics. They jump from study to study each one more amazing than the next. This short three page white paper does a wonderful job of helping you with a pricing strategy based on how people really behave. The Retail

Burgernomics is based on the theory of purchasing-power parity, the notion that a dollar should buy the same amount in all countries. Thus in the long run, the exchange rate between two countries should move towards the rate that equalizes the prices of an identical basket of goods and services

When you are crafting and acknowledging values for your company can the values in the extreme be bad for the organization?

When your a leader and blocking the view of your organization. Are you helping or hurting the organization with your lack of transparency?

Check out the new book by Aaron Goldman on what you can learn from Google on marketing.

Is your customer experience making you money? Costing you money? Do you know? Like a line of falling dominos, daily actions across your organization form a sequence of events that, if aligned correctly, build momentum and culminate in what every business wants-outstanding financial performance.

Exceptional leaders use questions 70 to 80 percent of the time to increase alignment, engagement, and accountability among their co-workers. Without trust it is unreasonable to expect you would ask one of your co-workers anything of value because in your mind you will clearly be judging or discounting their answers.

Are you playing to win or just do good enough. In this post you will be challenged to consider taking an extra step to upgrade your team.

This is a webinar that is based on the Just Ask Leadership 360 Assessment. This is original content and varies from the book Just Ask Leadership – Why great managers always ask the right questions!

Business Check Lists – How to better systematize, organize and deputize in your business

Business Check Lists – How to better systematize, organize and deputize in your business