Richard Stanger is the CEO of StangerCarlson. He is a business strategist, executive coach and advisor to senior leaders. His passion is working with leaders of professional services firms in developing and implementing their business strategies. Richard has more than 25 years of hands-on leadership experience at recognized accounting and advisory firms.
My most recent blog post discussed the benefits of knowledge workers making better use of time to execute on important priorities. It commented on the role of managers in this process. A recent HBR blog piece provides some good further thought to the role of the manager in helping knowledge workers perform, pointing out that…
A recent HBR podcast talks about the need for knowledge workers to spend more time on things that really matter and less time on the multitude of things that are a lower priority yet take up most of the day. Although not presented as such, the podcast brings into focus a skill that is never…
On Saturday night, I saw Woody Allen’s new film about a woman named Jasmine who, following her husband’s arrest and ruin for defrauding his investors a la Madoff, seeks in vain to rebuild her life in San Francisco. Instead, she devolves to a desperate, borderline state with presumably little hope of recovery. What’s revealed late…
It’s become fashionable to stress Competencies in designing programs for developing leaders, growing talent and shaping culture. Increasingly, demonstrated Competencies are finding their way into the annual evaluation process where their weight can be significant. But what about Skills? Are there Skills that are so broad-based, even transformational, that they deserve the same emphasis? In…
We have engineered the individual performance process increasingly finely over the last ten years, and each new advance in technology helps cut it even finer. It’s time to look at how much value this activity is creating? While I’m not aware of a study that has looked at this issue in depth. The anecdotal evidence…
More and more good ideas are surfacing on how to be a leader who inspires and empowers, completely shedding the command and control approach . Most often the concept advocated expresses the new leadership style as a series of key behaviors by the leader. This checklist approach is helpful. but it is critical to keep…
Mike Myatt’s July 28 Forbes Blog Piece on outdated leadership practices provides a lot of food for thought. He looks at roughly 30 areas of leadership focus and contrasts the traditional perspective with today’s thinking, nicely bundling all concepts into just a word or phrase. It gives us a great snapshot of what’s right and…
So much energy goes into Developing Leaders, Growing Talent and Shaping Culture. In all the activity, a key point almost always gets lost: You can develop, grow and shape a lot of things in people, but not their values. This means that such things as Integrity, Trustworthiness, Honesty and Truthfulness are inherent in people or…
A recent HBR blog piece makes a convincing case that criticism of ideas in meetings results in much better outcomes than just saying yes to a leaders or a subcommittee chair. In fact, this point is so important that I would go even further: only by accepting — in fact catalyzing — criticism and and…
A recent HBR blog piece talked about curiosity as a leadership trait capable of getting much higher team performance. The main message is to transparently put your views on the table then solicit the views of others with curious questions, rather than rhetorical questions or questions asked merely to gain support for your point of…