Strategic Discipline Blog

It’s difficult to describe the respect I have for Admiral Stockdale.  The torture he faced at the hands of the Vietnamese was incredible.   Yesterday I received some more brutal facts about how things might look moving forward. 

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Topics: Acute Myeloid Luekemia, Customer Feedback, Employee Feedback, Five Dysfunctions of a Team, meeting rhythms, Stockdale Paradox, The Advantage

As a business coach I’ve discovered there are two opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to why a business doesn’t create a set of ideals, or as Jim Stengel calls it the Brand Ideal. 

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Topics: Employee Feedback, employee engagement, Strategic Discipline, Core Purpose, Grow: How Ideals Power Growth and Profit at the Wo, use of energy

“Doug loves a challenge!” 

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Topics: Good to Great, Acute Myeloid Luekemia, Customer Feedback, Employee Feedback, meeting rhythms, Stockdale Paradox

Did you realize when a customer says thanks, they make you happy, but they make themselves even happier.  In her book The How of Happiness, Sonja Lyubomirsky, a professor at the University of California, Riverside, describes a dozen scientifically proven strategies to make yourself happier.  The first?  Expressing gratitude.

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Topics: Employee Feedback, employee engagement, Switch, human behavior

Right now you should be deep into your annual planning or already have completed it.  In preparing our coaching clients for annual planning we always ask the company to complete a short five question employee survey to gather information.  Questions include what the company should start, stop and keep doing.  (Send me an email Employee Survey if you’d like these five questions.)  Discovery like this is important for the business in looking ahead.   Remember the movie “Titanic?”  “Iceberg dead ahead?”  Many times the people at the tactical level of our business know much more than we give them credit for, and frequently they see the obstacles, challenges and opportunities far better than we or our mangers and departments heads can.

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Topics: Employee Feedback, Annual Plan, Growth Summit, Employee Survey

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Topics: Employee Feedback, employee engagement, themes, performance, productivity

Imagine it’s the biggest moment of your life.  Your opportunity for glory.  The moment professionally you’ve practiced and prepared for. Now imagine it’s in front of a live audience and millions of TV viewers.  In fact it’s the biggest stage in the world!  It’s a critical moment for you and the people you work with. 

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Topics: Employee Feedback, employee engagement, Sports World

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Topics: Employee Feedback, weekly meetings, positive reinforcement, priorities, Balance

Usually during tough times managers get tough.  They succumb to the pressure and use more punishment and negative reinforcement.   Why is this a recipe for disaster? If both positive and negative reinforcement get results why should we care? 

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Topics: Employee Feedback, employee performance, positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement

We’ve looked at the importance and frequency of positive reinforcement in previous blogs, How the Best Managers and Leaders Deliver Positive Reinforcement and Employee Feedback – The Need for Frequent Positive Reinforcement. Employee Feedback falls into Strategic Discipline's fundamental practices for effective meeting rhythms.  When we address customer and employee feedback in workshops and with our clients, frequently there’s confusion and misunderstanding about what this means.  It’s often because companies have their rhythms with regard to employees and staff and forget how critical their happiness and engagement can impact the bottom line growth of their business.

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Topics: Employee Feedback, employee performance, positive reinforcement, metrics, productivity