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My out of office reply is this podcast

“If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend six sharpening my axe.”  Abraham Lincoln Kirk is on vacation this week. He’s taking some time to “sharpen his axe” so he can be a healthier more productive husband, father, friend, and leader. It’s hard for any leader to disconnect, but it’s even harder to deal with the consequences of not taking time for true self-care. In fact, we did a whole podcast that talks about how other leaders disconnect and sharpen their axe. We’ll be the first …

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Call the Shot, Make the Shot (Part 5): 3 Best practices to get the most from your 1:1’s

“Ideas are great… but they are only as good as the people executing them.”Sean Spector, CEO + Founder Of Dropoff It’s almost a foregone conclusion – if you set the strategy and keep measuring it, it will all work out. However, a mediocre strategy with an amazing, aligned team will beat the brilliant strategy with a mediocre team almost every single time. The problem can be counterintuitive. We have all kinds of metrics and measurements to see how the business is performing, but we often neglect the most important metric …

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Call the Shot, Make the Shot (Part 4): 7 Strategy Myths that quietly destroy healthy strategy

Working closely with leaders and their organizations, I hear a ton of myths around strategy. Many people have a strong opinion on what they think will (or will not) work when it comes to developing and executing their growth strategy. For example, “OKRs don’t work… We have to get everyone aligned to these goals… We need to set stretch goals… We have too many meetings… We need a 10-year vision…” The list goes on and on. Today, I’m not only going to dispel some common misunderstandings around developing and executing …

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Call the Shot, Make the Shot (Part 3): Execution, the Gift that Never Stops Giving

The best gift you can give yourself, your team, your investors, your customers, and your organization is the ability to execute. Ideas are a dime a dozen. Execution of those ideas is where dimes turn into fortunes. In this series, I’ve talked a lot about how to call the shot – in other words, how to set your strategy for the year. Most businesses I get the chance to work with have called the shot in one way or another. But today’s episode is all about where strategy typically dies …

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Call the Shot, Make the Shot (Part 2): 1 question CEOs are asking to make sure their plan gets executed

Here is what Sean Spector, Founder and CEO of Dropoff says is critical to success, “I think lots of people have ideas of, ‘here’s an idea to solve this, or here’s an idea to solve that.’ It’s that next step, trying to do it: that’s the scariest thing in the world. If you’re not willing to fail, you’ll almost never succeed.” In the last episode, we started to show you how to build a strategic plan that unlocks growth in a competitive market – specifically, unpacking the concept of strategic …

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Call the Shot, Make The Shot (Part 1): If you aim and nothing, you will hit it every time.

What confidence level do you have in next year’s strategy? Will it be executed with the quality, timeliness, and budget you have promised to your investors, customers, and team members? In this For You Leaders podcast series, “Call the Shot, Make the Shot,” I will share the best practices around strategy from some of the world’s fastest-growing companies, like Amazon, HomeAway, Dropoff, and many others. The practices and principles will help you go beyond developing strategy and goals (calling the shot) to, more importantly, bringing your strategy to life through …

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Velocity Vector (Part 5): The Anatomy of Growth – 12 Warning Signs of Success

It’s true. NOTHING KILLS FASTER THAN SUCCESS. That’s because success has a way of masking the issues that rob an organization of its full potential. Every healthy business matures through 3 distinct stages of growth with different characteristics and problems at each stage. If you are successful, you will grow yourself into problems. As a leader, it’s your responsibility to know which stage of growth your organization is in. You must be able to predict and prepare for the journey ahead so you don’t stall out – or worse. In …

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Velocity Vector (Part 4): Decision Velocity – What is it and why is it so elusive?

The goal of the Velocity Vector is to provide you with a framework and the mindset needed to achieve Decision Velocity. Although Decision Velocity sounds provocative and like something you should have, what is Decision Velocity? More importantly, why is it the unspoken goal of every leader, yet so elusive?  If you’ve been following our series on the Velocity Vector, we’ve talked about Clarity, Informed Decisions, and Alignment. You might have been nodding your head in agreement during the episodes.  But what happens when keeping your promises and achieving your …

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The healing power and science behind gratitude

As we approach Thanksgiving, we wanted to re-release one of our most popular podcasts ever. By any measure, 2020 has been a challenging year. That’s why it’s even more important than ever to focus on today’s subject: gratitude. It may sound tone-deaf, but gratitude is a healing tool with an incredible impact on my life and so many others. Furthermore, science proves an attitude of gratitude will literally rewire your brain for success – even in a year like 2020, and all the time. Listen to this special episode of …