Game playing at work, if done right, can turbocharge performance in the workplace. Business, after all, is a game. We compete with others to win profits, or to go on a quest to attain a grand result.
A dysfunctional leadership team will kill a midsized company’s growth. Even one subpar leader hurts, and hurts badly.
How big can a firm grow without leadership infrastructure? When is the right time to move past free-form entrepreneurialism?
Growing companies can be victims of their own success. When they get the growth they so desperately seek, they may just as quickly outgrow their leadership infrastructure, rendering the business chaotic and inefficient.
I was walking through Atlanta airport returning from a client session when a CFO spotted me and told me about how he’d spurred growth in his firm.
CFOs at fast-changing, high-growth organizations become more strategic business partners by working with sales to derisk the business plan. Read this new article on CFO.com.
CFO Magazine’s online edition has asked me to write a monthly column about improving the CEO/CFO dynamic in mid-market companies. The first article just went up, and focuses on interacting with the board of directors.
Increasing performance, reviewing performance, and rewarding performance are tough subjects that must be handled skillfully. Microsoft’s stack ranking of employees has been a topic of a number of posts recently that isn’t working out too well when it comes to their employees’ innovation. So how does the middle market company practice these evaluative techniques without alienating their employees or stifling the essential creativity necessary for growth?
Being a loyal CEO can be deadly. But isn’t loyalty good? Admirable? Yes, but not always. Not when the CEO is loyal to people who aren’t loyal to the company.
Founders have different aspirations. Some founder CEOs are eager and able to develop their CEO skills enough to run a mid-market company, while others are not. Those who want to keep the job must build those skills rapidly, ahead of the needs of the business, if they hope to keep the backing of their investors.
Robert Sher is founding principal of CEO to CEO, a consulting firm of former chief executives that improves the leadership infrastructure of midsized companies seeking to accelerate their performance. He was chief executive of Bentley Publishing Group from 1984 to 2006 and steered the firm to become a leading player in its industry (decorative art publishing).