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.

Blue Jasmine

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…

Writing for Success

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…

It’s Team Performance Stupid!

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…

Unlocking Diversity

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…

The Curious Question

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…