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Real Leaders Don’t Watch Movies

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David Harper
“I’m king of the world!” “Show me the money!” “You can’t handle the truth!” “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.” “Go ahead, make my day.” Memorable quotes from memorable films. Love ’em or hate ’em, movies of all types end up in our collective consciousness. In reviewing a list of movie quotes recently, I was impressed by how just one short phrase was all I needed to…

Succession Planning, Part 2: Remaining Basic Steps

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David Harper
In the month since my post about Basic Steps for Effective Succession Planning, global economic issues have continued to ripple onto our shores, as we wrestle with our own economic concerns. Now more than ever, companies need great talent to lead them effectively, and smart leaders are doing all they can (as they did during better times) to ensure that they have a continuous supply of great talent. In this…

Succession Planning: Some Basic Steps

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David Harper
Even with the crummy economy and high unemployment, smart leaders are still concerned about the potential loss of great talent from their companies. Whether you’re running a company, division, department, or a team, you need to plan for your future talent needs. And the sooner, the better. In this month’s 60-Second Email (TM) , we outline the first steps you need to take for effective succession planning. And when you’re…

Lost Jobs Aren’t the Problem. They’re the Symptom.

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David Harper
There used to be a time when if jobs were lost during a recession, there was the expectation that many of these same jobs would eventually return after the economy came back. These days, though, there’s a whole different feel about jobs returning. In a recent article, “5 Myths About How to Create Jobs” (link), McKinsey notes that even if the economy were to add 200,000 jobs per month, it…

If Experience is the Best Teacher, What Did You Learn from the Great Recession?

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David Harper
“Those that fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it.” – Winston Churchill. “Experience is the best teacher, but the tuition is high.” – Norwegian proverb If experience is, indeed, the best teacher, we’ve certainly had a post-graduate education this past year. And, yes, the tuition has been very high. So what did you learn from it? I didn’t have an immediate answer when I asked myself the…

Is Failure Truly Not an Option?

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David Harper
“If an educated work force is the nation’s human capital, business is seeing a lot of subprime these days.” – from An Educated Workforce, Wall Street Journal, November 23, 2009 Recently the Wall Street Journal invited top CEOs and policy makers to Washington to discuss critical issues facing the United States. According to John Chambers, Chairman and CEO of Cisco Systems, and a Co-Chair of the assembled task force on…

Now More than Ever, Offer One Hand to Shake and One Throat to Squeeze – Original draft

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David Harper
Today more than ever, companies are looking for leaders. Not the kind to fill management or leadership vacancies. They’re looking for employees, whether or not they have people under their direction, to step up and demonstrate a greater ability to contribute. They’re looking for people to lead in terms of what they bring to the table each and every day. In a different time, one might have argued that this…

Why You Should Know What Your Leaders Do. – Original draft

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David Harper
All great hockey players are ambitious and have a desire to win. Therefore, if I am ambitious and have a desire to win, I should become a great hockey player. As silly as this sounds, versions of this logic arise in leadership development. Example: We study a select group of great leaders, see what attributes they have in common, and then make conclusions about which leadership attributes are required for…

Do Your Leader Vacuums Need a Cleaning? – Original draft

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David Harper
“Nature abhors a vacuum.” The quote is often attributed to Aristotle, the Greek philosopher (and student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great) who lived from 384 to 322 BC. The quote has nothing to do with your carpets or your Hoover, Electrolux, or Dyson. Aristotle was talking about voids in space, places that are empty of matter, empty of “stuff”. Aristotle felt that true perfect vacuums, or voids,…

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