leadership posts, articles, and infographics

Are Your Employees Getting Happy Feet?

January 24, 2012 by Holly Green with 23 views

The employment pendulum seems to be swinging back to the employee side. How do you keep employees from getting “happy feet” when their job options increase? [read more]

False Expectations Appear Real

March 28, 2011 by Kneale Mann with 19 views

Eight Inches Between Our Ears The human mind is a marvel of engineering we may never understand. We can run countries, survive 127 hours trapped in a cave or overcome monumental odds. Our brain can also keep us from succeeding, present obstacles that may not be there and create deep depression. In business, you know that everyone in... [read more]

The Top Ten Ways To Grow Your Business

February 2, 2011 by Sandy Graham with 699 views

Following startup, many small businesses are so concentrated on daily business operations that they do not, or cannot, take the time to actively focus on business growth. While others are focused on growth but do not have a strategic plan to achieve it. The Top Ten Ways to Grow Your Business is provided to help your small... [read more]

Putting the I in Social Media

June 23, 2010 by Danny Brown with 452 views

Whenever I used to meet with a potential new client that was interested in a social media program, I always used to take a piece of paper with a little drawing on it. The surprise on their faces was always entertaining when they’d ask for my ideas for them, and instead of presenting a huge multi-slide PowerPoint, I’d show them this... [read more]

8 Ways to Create an “A Team”

June 20, 2010 by Dan McCarthy with 610 views

'Winning is habit. Unfortunately, so is losing." - Vince Lombardi How would others describe the performance of your team? Would they refer to your team “the A team”? Or are they compared to the Los Angeles Clippers (winning percentage: .362)? In either case, here are 8 things you can do to boost the performance of your... [read more]

Establishing a Culture of Distributed Leadership

June 14, 2010 by Dan McCarthy with 306 views

Here’s a guest post I wrote a few weeks ago for Right Management’s Talent@Work blog: In a recent article in the Washington Post, Deborah Ancona, a professor of management at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, wrote about a concept called “distributed leadership”. She used the term to respond to a reader’s question: “How can a senior... [read more]

A View from Inside the Leadership Pipeline

June 2, 2010 by Dan McCarthy with 569 views

We make a lot of assumptions about “high potentials”, such as: - They should be told that they are high potential - They should not be told - Their status should be informally implied - If you tell them, it will be a motivator - If you tell them, they’ll become more of a retention risk - If you tell them, they’ll get complacent, or... [read more]

Doing Business in China: ‘Going Global’ Profiles Jihong Sanderson – Top Innovative China Brand Woman

May 31, 2010 by Margot Heiligman with 681 views

In ‘Going Global’ the series focuses on what it takes for small and mid-sized businesses to leap into new markets, achieve global reach, and potentially improve current business processes and outcomes by extending beyond domestic boundaries for both scale and expertise. Bird's Nest Stadium, China, [photo by Andrey... [read more]

Top 7 Ways Leaders Create Accountability

May 29, 2010 by Skip Reardon with 519 views

Here is Bob Prosen's seven-step process to create an environment of accountability and achieve extraordinary results in any organization: Establish the organizations top three objectives. This means the significant few, not the important many. Once identified, objectives must be clear, concise, measurable and obtainable.... [read more]

You've Heard of the Economic Bubble, But What About the Employee Stress Bubble?

May 26, 2010 by Mark Harbeke with 295 views

We seem to be at the mercy of economic bubbles. The housing bubble is what led the government to bail out large mortgage and financial institutions. And while the economy seems to be steadily improving since that action was taken, Crisis Economics author Nouriel Roubini made headlines two weeks ago when he warned that "We... [read more]

Hardly worth the effort: Getting the last 10%

May 19, 2010 by Seth Godin with 226 views

In most fields, there's an awful lot of work put into the last ten percent of quality. Getting your golf score from 77 to 70 is far more difficult than getting it from 120 to 113 or even from 84 to 77. Answering the phone on the first ring costs twice as much as letting it go into the queue. Making pastries the way they do at a fancy... [read more]

Business Week, The Economist on the Trickle Down Recovery

May 17, 2010 by Steve King with 210 views

We've posted in the past on large corporations recovering more quickly from the Great Recession than smaller businesses. Two recent mainstream media articles discuss this: The Perils of Being Small from the Economist reports on small businesses shed jobs at a higher rate than large corporations during the recession and have been... [read more]

Why a VC is A Great Seed Investment Partner

May 17, 2010 by Lawrence Lenihan with 162 views

Later this morning, we are going to announce FirstMark’s seed investment program, FirstSteps. Although we are making the announcement now, we recently closed on our 10th investment in this program which we started last year. Since we started FirstMark in 1996, we have had a long history of creating companies from scratch and... [read more]

The Agile Board

May 13, 2010 by Fred Wilson with 233 views

Mark Suster wrote a post about boards of directors last week in which he coined the phrase "the agile board." I love that phrase. Too many boards meet once a month and that's it. I am on a few boards like that. Some boards I am on only meet six times a year and there is very little involvement between meetings. Those companies might as... [read more]

Create Your Own Social Network for Anything! ‘She Blogs She Blogs’ Series Featuring: Anne Driscoll, Ning’s VP Business Operations

May 13, 2010 by Margot Heiligman with 411 views

For those of you familiar with the Social Networking platform Ning- which enables online community and social network creators - there have been some recent announcements which drive the business in new directions. The news may be valuable to MyVenturepad’s small and mid-sized companies looking to build a better online... [read more]

Autopoiesis and how hyper-connectivity is literally bringing the networks to life

May 11, 2010 by Ross Dawson with 216 views

When I started writing my book Living Networks in early 2002 I thought that it was important to demonstrate that the concept of 'living networks' was not just a metaphor, but a reality: we, together with the networks that connect us, are literally a new life form. To show this I drew on the literature on autopoiesis, which was proposed... [read more]

Why Marketing and Sales Need an SLA

May 10, 2010 by Ardath Albee with 458 views

The B2B marketing-to-sales process can be a long and complex process for your company—as well as your customers. Without agreement for who does what, when, managing the buying process behind the scenes can get messy, fast. Collaboration between marketing and sales teams to develop a Service Level Agreement (SLA) can help to smooth the... [read more]

The Power of Why

May 10, 2010 by Brad Feld with 483 views

Simon Sinek’s TED Talk from TedxPuget Sound (Sept 2009) has been posted and is just awesome. He starts out with the question “Why is Apple so innovative,“ Why is it that Martin Luther King led the civil rights movement,” and “Why is it that the Wright Brothers were able to figure out controlled power manned flight... [read more]

Is Your Business a Microclimate?

May 7, 2010 by Editor Bloggertone with 185 views

Seasons in my back garden fascinate me. Snow melts quickly. The plants and weeds compete avidly throughout the year. After observing my neighbours' gardens, it occurred to me that there is a micro-climate in my back garden. Certainly it makes it easy to grow vegetables and flowers! The fact that weeds like growing... [read more]

Mentoring, platforms and taking a leap

May 7, 2010 by Seth Godin with 142 views

How much support does someone need (or get, or deserve, you pick) before they ship their art? The fearful lizard brain demands reassurance and coaching and even a push before it is quiet enough to permit us to do the difficult work our economy demands, before it will allow us to create art that changes others. So it's logical to wonder... [read more]