Our daily Field Notes email is just the kind of jumpstart you need. A fast read. Maybe less than a minute. Because sometimes it just takes one insight to change the trajectory of the day.
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Spread Messages Redundantly
When it comes to spreading strategic messages across an organization or a marketplace, the best communicators know something all leaders should know — there is a world of difference between repetition and redundancy. Repetition is about saying the same thing over and over. Redundancy is about saying the same thing in different ways. Over time, we tune out highly repetitive messages,…
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Don’t Blindly Follow Innovations
Society doesn’t do a good job of identifying the harmful effects of new innovations and technologies once they have taken hold in popular culture. True believers never want to hold back progress, so they resist improvements and changes that could offset the negative effect of these new innovations. Think tobacco, plastic bottles, guns, sugar, X-rays,…
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Being Effective Beats Being Right
Let’s agree to the following reality: Being “right” does not make you effective. In other words, having the facts in your favor does not mean others will follow you to the conclusion those facts suggest. Being right versus being effective is one of the hardest leadership lessons to learn in life, and too many seasoned…
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The Trap of Work-Ethic Suspicion
No one you lead wakes up and says to themselves, “I can’t wait to disappoint my leader today.” Starting from the viewpoint that everyone is trying to do the best they can is a game-changer for leaders who set a high bar. It puts everyone at ease and allows leaders to objectively examine their role…
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An Exercise to Strengthen Team Understanding
When teams gather to plan, the best leaders save some time for everyone to gain a deeper understanding of their teammates. A more in-depth understanding of who others really are helps teams to build trust and overcome petty disagreements. A team event that concludes without team members knowing just a little more about one another…
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Time Is More Arbitrary Than We Think
How leaders punctuate time, for themselves and for those they lead, influences their potential for progress. Society tells us to situate our accomplishments in weeks, months, quarters, and years. Year-end reviews, quarterly reports, and weekly metrics all speak to the power of set periods to define what it means to be productive. These recurrent periods…
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Pre-Decide Before a Situation Unravels
In the throes of the moment, when excitement, pressure, and scrutiny can blind our ability to make objective decisions, leaders often fail to make the difficult — and often unpopular — call to change direction. It is always easier to stay the course with an inferior strategy due to the noise and distraction of the…
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Positively Violate Expectations
Our experience with leaders creates strong expectations as to what they will do, how they will do it, and where and when they will do it. We get very comfortable with the common choices leaders make and value the predictability we find in their consistency. When leaders do the unexpected, it shakes people up —…
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Leave a Big Wake Behind You
When exceptional leaders finish their careers or move to another organization after a long tenure, they leave a big wake behind them. A lasting legacy is top of mind for leaders nearing an ending. They implicitly know this legacy will define both who they were, as well as how they will be remembered by the…
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The Sunk Cost Fallacy Applies to People
Of the many biases leaders fall prey to, perhaps none is more common than the Sunk Cost Fallacy. This insidious error refers to the tendency for leaders to follow through on something if they have already invested a lot of time, energy, or money into it. They do this even when the cost-benefit is no…