By: Gary Cohen For some people, Creative Meetings are the best kind. There are no wrong answers in these contexts, since the objective is just to generate ideas. You don’t need to do the hard work of coming to a decision, rolling out key information in a memorable way, or

By: Gary Cohen In reviewing recent surveys of top leaders by The Conference Board, Bain, World Economic Forum the six most significant and top challenges CEOs face that need to be addressed by organizations are: Attracting, Growing and Retaining trustworthy and capable Leadership Integrating Social Responsibility into the business model.

If you want a glimpse into how well an organization is run, take a look at how they run their meetings. The value they get out of their meetings usually reflects how well the organization is run as a whole. Meetings are designed to accomplish a particular objective. There are

The quality of an organization’s meetings is often tied to the quality of the organization’s overall work. Like effective organizations, effective meetings have clearly defined roles and objectives. There are four different types of meetings: decision-making, informational, creative, and motivational. While every meeting type is important, decision-making meetings are perhaps

In his book, Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations, Thomas L. Friedman observes that three forces are combining to change our world at unprecedented rates: the exponential growth of computing power and access (Moore’s law), the widespread and connected effect of

What is often frustrating to leaders is energizing to this executive coach. People often ask, “Where is the most fun for you when working with a client?” I respond, “Picture a venn diagram where leading self, leading others, and leading the organization all intersect. Because of growth, it looks and

A business partnership is a system. Sometimes that system resembles a couple or family system. And like any couple or family, there may be one over-functioning and one under-functioning person in the partnership. Often the over-functioning one does a great job of compensating for the other’s dysfunction, but that doesn’t

  Suit-able Leadership Your wife says your wardrobe is handicapping you professionally. You respond by finding a wardrobe consultant. He eyes your wide-lapel suit and room-for-two pleated pants and says, “Listen, Italian would be perfect!” What does that mean? It means he loves Italian. But do you–or could you? If

The right word may be effective, but no word is ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.– Mark Twain   Pausing is undervalued and underutilized by leaders. There’s a tendency when someone asks us a question to enter a “me” mindset. “Now it’s my turn,” our brains tend to

Types of Meetings breakdown into four major categories: Decision Making meetings; Creative meetings; Informational meetingsand; Planning meetings.

In this series of posts, we will examine how Latin maxims can provide today’s leaders with new insights.  A maxim is defined by the Free Dictionary as “a succinct formulation of a fundamental principle, general truth, or rule of conduct.” The first of the Latin Maxims Bis dat qui cito

Lead by how you Ask Questions CO2 Partners founder Gary Cohen is not alone in his remarkable approach to leadership: ask questions to build alignment, engagement and accountability. In this series of posts, I am discussing “Change Your Questions, Change Your Life” by Marilee Adams, MSW, Ph.D. She offers 10 very

Criticism and blame can quickly destroy a culture. In this post discover how this behavior leads to a vicious cycle that kills productivity and employee engagement.

How to lead an efficient and effective meeting Communicate the importance of attendance, participation, and punctuality. If key staff members don’t show up, cancel the meeting. If their absence has been approved in advance, have them delegate their decision-making responsibility to someone else in the meeting. Make sure all agenda

Today I was catching up with a dear friend, Bernie Sucher,  who lives in Russia. He shared with me an amazing program modeled after Teach for America. It is called Venture for America. It was founded by Andrew Yang who is the current president of the organization. Take a look

The most effective way, I’ve found, to stop triangulation is for the CEO to communicate that employees caught engaging in triangulation will be fired. It is amazing how fast the behavior changes!

How can I ignite imagination? Gary Beck says that igniting imagination comes from rubbing minds together. With all of his leadership and marketing experience (as former President of FCB Database Marketing Group and former Executive Director of Database and Infrastructure for vehicle sales and services marketing at General Motors), he