leadership

Change agents are your organization’s real leaders

Market change, economy change, technology change, workforce change, communication change, today change riddles stress cracks in organization foundations. Whether 80-year-old companies, Fortune 500 stalwarts, or new-technology dynamos, change is as much an on-going assault on organizations as rust is an on-going assault on metal and your change agents are your organization’s saviors. You see tomorrow’s relevance [...]

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Tagged as: change, change management, innovation, leadership, strategy

3 performance review politics that always trump merit

When performance reviews were created the goal was to collect and share observed performance feedback that would sustain good performance or the observed feedback needed to improve performance. The performance review would then inform merit increase in salary or bonus based on performance feedback. The goal: a pay increase or bonus based on merit. Transparent for all [...]

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Tagged as: leadership, manage, motivation, performance management, performance review, workforce performance

Stop giving advice people ignore

At work do you ever say, “let me give you some advice”? If so, do people lean forward with anticipation to hear what you have for advice? When reviewing a draft ever heard someone tell you, “well, here’s my advice”? If so, do you take a deep breath so as not to lose your cool? [...]

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Tagged as: communication, competence, leadership, skils

4 questions leaders need to ask … themselves

Leaders at the top of the organization are accountable to deliver results. Some leaders believe results come from questioning others. Here are 4 questions leaders need to ask themselves, before they begin to ask anything of others: When’s the last time someone disagreed with me in a meeting? What am I teaching? Am I getting [...]

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Tagged as: leader, leadership, motivation, strategy

Engagement needs both context and perspective

“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet … “, iambic pentameter aside, I appreciate Mr. Shakespeare’s point. However, when I look at a word that is recently trending in a lot of companies and organizations, like the word engagement is, it seems context, perspective, and the value proposition truly defines how sweet the [...]

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Tagged as: communication, engagement, health care, leadership, market, motivation

Root cause and critical path, that’s organization development

What is organization development? Yes organization development is training and leadership development and coaching and performance management and change management and communications and organization design and competency models and strategic planning and really so much, it is almost more confusing than helpful to really say what organization development is. This challenge spills over when I am [...]

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Tagged as: change management, leadership, organization development, systems theory, training

Who knows?

In collaboration, there is a notion that we share thoughts and perspectives of what we know to make better decisions. What we know and share is important for context to any decision and you may have seen some or heard something similar to this: What you know you know, What you know you don’t know, [...]

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Tagged as: coaching, communication, decision, information, leadership, strategic planning, strategy

Influence of The Modern Firm

The Modern Firm: Organizational Design for Performance and Growth by John Roberts Brief: The most fundamental responsibility of a general manager is to craft strategy and design an organization where the strategy can succeed within the economic, political, legal, regulatory, social, and the technological environment the firm operates. A direct challenge to the design is finding alignment within the [...]

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Tagged as: economics, influen, influence, innovation, leadership, management, organization design, strategy

Getting it done versus getting it accomplished

Some people, and some organizations, can confuse very elemental operational concepts. The confusion is tough to trace to a culture issue or a perception issue between getting it done versus getting it accomplished. Getting it done means you care more about finishing than about quality. Very different terms. Very different concepts. An alternative way to [...]

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Tagged as: goal, leadership, management, milestone, project, strategy, task

The pain with change

Bill Hybels, on stirring change, says, “Leaders move people from here to there… The first play is not to make ‘there’ sound wonderful. The first play is to make ‘here’ sound awful.” Though this is a quote on leadership, the key to so many change mantras is that change only comes about when the level [...]

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Tagged as: AI, Appreciative Inquiry, Bernard Mohr, Bill Hybels, change, change management, community, Jane Magruder Watkins, leadership, organization development, strategic planning, strategy

Our big letdown with leaders

A good piece in Sunday’s Boston Globe Ideas section reveals we human beings disappoint easily. And if we are easy to disappoint we are acutely set up for big letdowns from leaders all around us. However, the big letdown and disappointment we beings feel really may have more to do with us then the leaders themselves. Here [...]

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Tagged as: Art Markman, Boston Globe, change, Drake Bennett, Eleanor Roosevelt, innovation, Jeremy Burrus, Justin Kruger, Laura Kressel, leaders, leadership, transformation

The key to innovation may be better employee hygiene

Today’s drive for continual innovation, as it is taught, as it is written about, as it is sought, and as it is crowd sourced has a lot to do with early pioneers in management theory. For example why is hygiene important to innovation? Innovation needs motivation and motivation needs hygiene to succeed. The humanistic management school emphasizes, [...]

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Tagged as: Abraham Maslow, fear, Frederick Herzberg, Herzberg's Motivation-Hygiene Theory, Herzberg's Two Factor theory, innovation, leadership, management, motivation, od, organization development

Evaluating risk: financial models versus competency models, part 2

Models attempt to identify the assets that have value. How to manage those assets. And how to strategically turn these assets into money. This is a 2nd, follow-up, post comparing financial models to competency models to evaluate risk. As I mentioned in that post, typical financial models and their build-outs inherently ignore important aspects of [...]

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Tagged as: competency, David McClelland, due diligence, evaluation, financial, investment, leadership, model, models, private equity, recruiting, retain, train, training, VC

Golden parachutes reward risk or moral hazard?

The July 31st Economist wrote an article called The wages of failure and brought an interesting perspective to those CEOs dismissed because or PR disasters. Do golden parachutes reward bad leadership or reward risk crucial for a firm to rebuild, re-imagine, and compete within capitalism? The article acknowledges the outrage many have to folks like [...]

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Tagged as: compensation, leadership, moral hazard, reform, risk, shareholder

Create firm value, build talent during a downturn

Where many leaders chose to cut staff, cut talent management programs or to cut both to reduce costs, a Deloitte Consulting year-long study of 1,800 executives at large companies around the globe found retaining key employees, increasing the hiring of rivals’ future stars, and increasing programs to develop high-potential employees and corporate leaders are strategies to [...]

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Tagged as: Deloitte Consulting, leadership, motivation, opportunity, organization performance, retention

In review: Organization sabotage and the butterfly effect

July 2010 in review. A roundup of blogs from the previous month: Organization sabotage and the butterfly effect — As a manager, running a team takes more than lining people up and pointing to the finish line. People are all not only motivated by salary. A leader or a manager may feel sabotaged when their [...]

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Tagged as: change, change management, content, economy, innovation, investment, James Fallows, leadership, management, motivation, organization, project, talent, tax, The Atlantic, venture capital

Stephen Cummings, Owner, Insights

“Toby exemplifies the next generational leadership that is shaping the future. He has an amazing ability to get to the crux of the matter quickly. When you combine this with his ability to astutely understand the needs of each client you will understand how he has become a trusted partner to senior leaders. He works [...]

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Tagged as: consulting, growth, leadership, learning, organization change, small business, social media, start-up, startup, Stephen Cummings, transformation, trusted partner

The Great Spare-Time Revolution

Free time, spare time, where to find any time? Here’s a staggering thought for those who feel they have no spare time: it is estimated all the Wikipedia articles, edits, and arguments about articles and edits represent around 100 million hours of human labor. 100 million hours! Where do people find that time for a [...]

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Tagged as: Clay Shirky, Daniel Pink, leader, leadership, manage, motivate, motivation, time

Isn’t it enough that I told them?

Does your organization communicate or inform. Does your leader invite conversation at the table? Does your leader offer an environment of dialogue? If the answer is no, how does that affect organization motivation throughout all levels? Do your project leaders and project sponsors sit around the table and audit the failed implementations with comments like [...]

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Tagged as: collaboration, communication, conversation, dialogue, failure, John Kotter, leadership, leading change, strategy

Talent score report brought to you by your credit agency

How’s your credit score? Perhaps I could ask another way, how accurate is your credit score? Perhaps another way, how accurate is your credit score in assessing your talent, management, or leadership potential? According to Equifax, their internal assessments “directly aligns human resources to overall organization goals” and you can read about it here: Talent [...]

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Tagged as: assessment, leadership, strategy, workforce performance

Change management bottom up or top down

Classic change theory: leadership drives change; leadership must be committed for change to work. Seems to make sense, but in reality leadership is irrelevant. The organization’s ability to change is dictated by the operational units and employees, not leadership. The reality: culture eats strategy for lunch. Your workers dictate change and strategy. Leadership doesn’t drive [...]

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Tagged as: change, change management, cost of culture, John Kotter, leadership, management, strategy

Competing values drives your organization out of business

Cultures are characterized by how things are done around here. Culture is sometimes adopted from the founder, sometimes developed consciously by teams who try to improve performance, and sometimes culture is formed in reaction to a lack of leadership or need for survival. Culture emerges from collective: behavior, values, norms, assumptions, expectations, and process When [...]

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Tagged as: Competing Values Framework, cost of culture, leadership, organization performance, strategy, teams

5 tips to manage better meetings

Meetings, meetings, and more meetings. We have meetings to clear up confusion, to communicate, to interact, to make decisions, to listen, and to collaborate. Too many meetings end without clear decisions and too often it is not until after the meeting is finished when the real conversations begin when people: complain about not being heard, [...]

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Tagged as: body language, communication, leadership, manage, meeting

3 reasons for failure: change, participation, and risk

An organization builds a culture of success when it can take a strategy, identify and prioritize the most important projects within the strategy, and consistently deliver projects on time, on budget, and within identified quality standards. Charting success is not easy. 80% of all projects fail for three main reasons. 1. 80% of projects fail [...]

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Tagged as: change, executive, leadership, participation, portfolio management, project, quality, risk, strategy

The bully in the corner office

I challenge myself to write blogs that might start a conversation either leading to change or to sustain what is working. I want to present an idea to provide a spark for action or follow-through. Anyone can come up with an idea, that’s easy, the hard part is to take an idea into implementation. My [...]

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Tagged as: bully, communication, cost of culture, diversity, fear, leaders, leadership, motivation, organization development, political correctness

Twitter power – Sarah Palin and the tweet to sue the entire Internet

As a follow-up to my Twitter is a waste of time blog, I provide a 4th example about the application of Twitter and social media communication: Late night, July 4, Sarah Palin uses Twitter to threaten to sue the entire Internet. Sarah Palin’s lawsuit tweets: AKGovSarahPalin To see full text of the letter from my [...]

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Tagged as: blog, communication, Huffington Post, leadership, msnbc, New York Times, Sarah Palin, Shannyn Moore, strategy, Twitter, Washington Post, web 2.0

Competing values drive organization resistance

Organizations, like people, develop. A start-up has different organization qualities than a 25-year-old, Fortune 500 company. As operations increase in scale and scope a start-up faces new pressures. Each increase in production, staffing, or market share increases their operating risk. What worked as a start-up company with a staff of 5 and $500,000 in sales [...]

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Tagged as: alignment, assessment, Competing Values Framework, diversity, leadership, Myers-Briggs, risk, strategy, values

George Washington slept here

Statues are built for leaders, or leaders are built for statues, one way or the other statues are built for pioneers, those who sought a new way; who risked conformity for their vision of what could be; who sacrifice an easy path to retirement for an audacious goal. The statues you see in your town [...]

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Tagged as: Budapest, change, dictator, George Washington, goals, Hungary, inspiration, leaders, leadership

The bottom line: motivation

Your organization is only effective when they feel like it. Have you coached your management and executive team on how to motivate people around your vision? The bottom line is motivation, their motivation, not yours. A leader holds management accountable to understand, commit, and own their role to translate your vision to their team. Your [...]

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Tagged as: ability, bottom line, executive, Frederick Herzberg, goal, Herzberg's Motivation-Hygiene Theory, Herzberg's Two Factor theory, leadership, manage, motivation, plan, profit, vision

Emotion versus intelligence – the tortoise and the hare

In a prior post I advocate emotional intelligence as a more important quality job interview criteria than a corporate or team culture fit. What is emotional intelligence or EI? And what does the EI vs. IQ debate mean? Where IQ intends to measure the ability to reason deductively or inductively. Much has come to light [...]

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Tagged as: Boston Globe, cost of culture, Drake Bennett, Emotional Intelligence, EQ, fear, IQ, leadership, recruiting, team

In review: Leaders and fishing

May 2009 in review. A roundup of blogs from the previous month: Leaders and fishing — Leaders craft the vision and convey how to embark on a course from what is to what could be. Leaders must rely on their managers to manage, but leaders need to roll their sleeves up and steward the message [...]

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Tagged as: buy in, change, change management, cost of culture, diversity, goals, leadership, leading, managing, resources, risk, stakeholders, vision

How goals help us fail

March 15th I read an article in Boston’s Sunday Globe Ideas section on how goals have a dangerous side. The article called Why Setting Goals Can Backfire jumped-started my thoughts on goals. The past two weeks I have spent time thinking and scribbling notes all over this article. I thought I’d share some. [the .pdf [...]

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Tagged as: Boston Globe, communication, consequence, dangerous, Drake Bennett, fear, goals, leaders, leadership

Buy in

In organization change I always avoid the term buy in. You may hear the term in some variation of the following: now we need to get [insert stakeholder here] to buy in. I have never been comfortable asking anyone to “buy in” to a strategic plan, a new product launch, or an organization change. ‘Buy [...]

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Tagged as: buy in, communication, development, leadership, motivation, organization development, stakeholder, values

Leading and managing

Managers manage. Leaders lead. Are these roles so different? A manager is charged to manage their resources against a budget. Does this allow a manager to maximizing their talent, to cultivate creativity in their team, or to take risks? The manager needs to deliver to their budget and align their resources to successfully enable their [...]

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Tagged as: change, communication, leader, leadership, manager, motivation, skills, vision

Leaders and fishing

I focus a lot of root-cause analysis on how a leader affects their organization. Though it may seem people are responsible for their own motivation, this assumption is far too variable to count on for results. People, rightly so, have their own view, their own filter, their own experience, and their own goals. These rarely [...]

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Tagged as: China, communication, fishing, leaders, leadership, manage, motivation

What can a 5 year old teach you about leadership?

When an organization’s words do not match action, who is to blame? How many companies have you seen or worked with that have literature, speeches, employee handbooks, or marketing that just does not match the actions or culture inside the organization? Ever been around a company with printed materials that talk of putting people first, [...]

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Tagged as: blame, customers, integrity, leader, leaders, leadership, Mahatma Gandhi, organization, organizations, values

Quick Bio

Toby Elwin has lived around the world and worked globally with, and for, some of the most highly-respected leaders and organizations in their fields.

This site, and thoughts, are rooted in the role leadership and talent have on an organization's motivation to influence, achieve, and sustain.

Toby's work combines systems theory, organization development, marketing, and portfolio and project management from more than 15 years in post-merger integration.
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Blog Archives
Biggest Influences – So Far

See Influence page for more detail:

The Modern Firm: Organizational Design for Performance and Growth by John Roberts

The Workforce Scorecard by Mark A. Huselid, Brian E. Becker, and Richard W. Beatty

Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk by Peter L. Bernstein

The Future of Ideas by Lawrence Lessig

The Truth About Thriving in Change by William S. Kane

The Motivation to Work by Frederick Herzberg, Bernard Mausner, and Barbara Bloch Snyderman

The New Rules of Marketing and PR by David Meerman Scott

Working with Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman

The HR Value Proposition by Dave Ulrich

The Strategy Paradox by Michael Raynor
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