By Jeffrey Ford, on June 1st, 2011
I believe a cornerstone of personal leadership effectiveness is operating with integrity. Michael Jensen, the Jesse Isidor Straus Professor of Business Administration, Emeritus, at Harvard Business School contends that without integrity, nothing works. Jensen defines integrity as honoring your word, which means that (1) you keep your word, and (2) just as soon as you
Continue reading Where Do You Keep Your Word after You Give It?
By Jeffrey Ford, on April 11th, 2011
One of the more startling statistics in the business world is that approximately 70% of organizational changes fail to produce the results for which they were undertaken. In her book The Last Word on Power, Tracy Goss reports that when interviewed, sixty-two percent (62%) of the managers from companies whose change efforts failed listed resistance
Continue reading Do Leaders Cause Resistance?
By Jeffrey Ford, on January 27th, 2011
One of the persistent questions I get from people in my classes and training sessions is “What can I do to motivate people to give me work that is complete, accurate, and on time? I am tired of the excuses.” Fair question, though I think it is misdirected. It attributes the problem to their motivation
Continue reading Get Better Results from Other People
By Jeffrey Ford, on January 24th, 2011
Being personally accountable goes beyond acknowledging you did or didn’t do something. It also requires owning the outcome (good or bad), doing a realistic examination of how you contributed to it, and coming up with new actions to take and then taking them.
I recently had a student tell me he was being personally accountable
Continue reading Being Personally Accountability Goes beyond “Owning Up”
By Jeffrey Ford, on December 17th, 2010
One reason people experience stress and feel that they have more to do than time in which to do it is because they are in an argument with The First Law of Accomplishment. The First Law of Accomplishment states: “The accomplishment of anything requires a sufficient period of time in which to accomplish it.” Its
Continue reading Obeying the First Law of Accomplishment
By Jeffrey Ford, on September 21st, 2010
Building accountability requires giving honest feedback on how people perform. If we want people to provide high quality work on time, telling them when they succeed and when they fail at doing so is essential. But providing this feedback is often easier said than done.
Accountability
Accountability begins when we agree to do something for someone else.
Continue reading Accountability Requires Feedback
By Jeffrey Ford, on April 21st, 2010
How do you synchronize work when you can’t talk to each other? What allows people to know who you are and what you are accountable for if you can’t tell them? One way is through the use of “signage” which refers to the use of any kind of visual graphic created to display information to
Continue reading What Name Tag Will He Wear?
By Jeffrey Ford, on April 5th, 2010
I am occasionally asked by the managers in my classes, “How do I get my boss to do this stuff?” My answer is often the same, “Get interested in what they are interested in. Find out what they have their attention on, what they are concerned for, and what they are accountable for and then
Continue reading How Do I Get My Boss to Change?
By Jeffrey Ford, on March 1st, 2010
I recently had the working managers in my MBA class on execution (as in implementation, not hanging) undertake an exercise to improve relationships with the people with whom they work. In particular, we were interested in whether or not they could improve their affinity (liking) for people they currently did not like very much. They
Continue reading Improving Relationships at Work
By Jeffrey Ford, on February 8th, 2010
Have you ever heard someone say, “What we need around here is more accountability”? If so, you are in good company because accountability, how to get it, and why people don’t have more of it is a popular topic in today’s workplace.
I encounter this complaint from the managers in my MBA classes as well as
Continue reading The Two Sides to Getting “More Accountability”
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