Tag Archives | failure

Watching HP Board Situation is Like Watching a Slow Bleed-Out

The New York Times Saturday quotes Patrick McGurn, special counsel for Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), who states that “shareholder efforts to remove directors in uncontested elections rarely succeed or come close, even in egregious circumstances.” In 2012, there were elections for 17,081 director nominees at U.S. corporations. According to ISS, just 61 of those nominees [...]

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Courage Does Not Roar

Today, I was in a room full of remarkable people, making a list of what qualities make someone remarkable. The predictable elements were listed: Hard-working Resourceful Creative Intelligent/ Smart Organized… After 15 or so elements were listed on the post-it board… courageous was added to the list. When you are courageous (or fearless, bold – [...]

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Is Success Predictable?

So many teams fail in growth. They blame their strategy, or their tactics, or the market, or bring up some issue about product/market/timing fit was off, or that some people failed at execution and so on. The list of reasons is almost endless for any team. As often as this happens, don’t you wonder if [...]

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5 Ways to Take Advice

“What do you do?” When I was starting a consulting company called Rubicon back in 1999, my nephew wanted to know what I did for a living. Having just finished running a division of a company where I was responsible for setting and delivering on a specific measurable result, I noticed I was having a [...]

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First Days

The walk to school this crisp morning involved little girls dressed in some very stylish ballerina-style sequined skirts, incredibly crisp white shirts with clean new shoes, and a palpable exuberance. Kids who were grunting at each other at the end of last year were hugging with joy at their reunion. But besides those few moments, [...]

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The Excuses

When I was getting divorced from my first husband, I spent many months reliving the past. These mental hamster-wheel moments were accompanied by sleepless nights, too much scotch, and – to complete this picture in all it’s transparency—family-size bags of Lays BBQ potato chips. During these long nights, I would try and re-imagine each crucial [...]

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6 Ways to Change Business

The consistent question asked from any audience and group I work with is…. For us to do this high-performance collaborative work: Don’t the leaders have to change their approach? And, don’t the individual contributors have to change to step up to the game? But these questions are never asked together — meaning, individuals ask “don’t [...]

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Avoiding Strategic Failure

I’ve watched strategy being developed within companies like Adobe, Apple, Autodesk, and Nokia. I’ve seen strategy created by individuals. I’ve seen the big suits of Bain and McKinsey at work. I’ve seen it done well, and occasionally I’ve seen it done poorly. Having read more than 100 books that define the best thinking on strategy, I’ve noticed that following the existing methods often doesn’t yield success.
It’s not just the methodology. Here are five reasons strategy fails in businesses:

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