Entries by Christopher Kolenda

Create best value experiences: offer employees an EVP

Is your company trapped in the doom loop of high turnover, poor execution, and poor customer experience?  This loop leads to your customers seeking alternatives, which means declining sales, lower profits, and a higher risk of bankruptcy. Organizations typically take their employees for granted, failing to invest in their well-being and future growth because they […]

Do you have 360 awareness?

360 external awareness occurs when you know what people think and feel about you and their workplace. The key stakeholders include your bosses, peers, and the employees you lead. The latter is the trickiest, and Northwestern University football coach Pat Fitzgerald was fired for neglecting this responsibility. I remember watching Pat Fitzgerald play football at […]

What Civil War hero Joshua Chamberlain tells us about Buy-in

Buy-in occurs when your employees provide voluntary support.  A significant leadership challenge is gaining buy-in for a new initiative or one people previously opposed.  Buy-in explains the vital difference between high and low-performing organizations. Without buy-in, leaders must focus on compliance, dispute resolution, and corrective action, which robs them of time and energy for strategy […]

Cognitive Diversity: What the best leaders look for in an alter-ego

Cognitive diversity occurs when you bring people together who have complementary natural strengths, a.k.a. Superpowers. For most organizations, ideas – details are the vital complement. The ideas people tend to be the big picture strategic thinkers, the innovators, and status quo disruptors.  Some, like Steve Jobs, are hedgehogs: they have a big idea that will […]

How the best leaders avoid being Prigozhined

Frustrated by the Ukraine war, the Russian military’s incompetence, and reported efforts to dismantle his Wagner mercenary group, warlord Yevgeney Prigozhin took over the Rostov-on-Don military headquarters and sent columns of loyalists toward Moscow in what appeared to be a coup to overthrow Vladimir Putin or capture senior military officials. After a day of drama, […]

Anger, boredom, frustration – what happens when you optimize the wrong things

Just because you can do something does not mean you should do it. Optimization creates unintended consequences that can undermine your business. Baseball may be the most data-mined sport. Ever since the championship Oakland A’s Moneyball, big data has dominated the game.  Big data told you where and how to pitch the ball to a […]

3 Ways to Use The Lasso Effect to Improve your Leadership

Ted Lasso leadership isn’t possible in real life. Ted Lasso is a person of reflexive positivity who remains blissfully ignorant of the job and yet wins everyone over while consistently losing games. Ted Lasso is not a mentor, he’s a mirror, showing us our own absurdity. WHY IT MATTERS: When we see what’s wrong, we […]

Determination is a Powerful Tool

Podcast: Perseverance and Determination My parents, David and Joanne, and three siblings—Dan, Laura and Mark—all taught me the importance of perseverance and determination, the will to succeed at whatever you put your mind to. We would always challenge one another to be the best that we could be. Determination helped me endure some terrible experiences. […]