“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 …

“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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …