If your team isn’t fully engaged and fully owning the projects and areas of responsibility they’ve been assigned, then you’re leaving a lot of value on the table. Progress will be slow. Results will be mediocre. You’ll be repeatedly sucked back into low-level issues to compensate. The good news is that as a leader you can shape a better

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In the previous article in this brief series on ownership, I explained that as leaders we have the responsibility to create an ownership environment for others and that everybody has a responsibility to generate an ownership stance for themselves. Today we’re going to look at what taking an ownership stance really means. The way I see it, an ownership

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In the previous article in this mini series on creating an ownership culture comment we first explored the leadership choice that is available in any situation:We can either take the path of victimhood entitlement and avoidance orWe can take the path of leadership, ownership and actionWhat this means for us as leaders is that we can’t blame

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“The problem I have is that my team isn’t taking enough ownership.” It’s a comment I hear a lot from senior leaders. My response is, “well, how are you taking ownership for that situation?” That generally leads us into a discussion of the leadership choice and an exploration of what levers are available to a leader who wants to draw

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In today’s article I want to offer you a simple model to better understand how the choices you are making are impacting your impact as a leader. In any situation or challenge that we face we have two paths available to us. The first option is to look at what we did not have, that stopped us achieving

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In this mini-series we’ve examined why Strategic Time is the #1 metric that governs exponential success. It’s how we step back from the day-to-day to envision – and move forward on – our breakthrough projects. Last time, we looked at the four key challenges you’ll have to overcome if you want to free up time for strategy:T –

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Last time we talked about why your #1 KPI for future success is the amount of Strategic Time is that you can create each week. To recap:Every hour of Strategic Time is an investment in the future and, done right, will pay dividends for years to come.Contrast that with doing operational work, which only gets you short-term

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Interviewing 75 of the world’s top CEOs told me one thing about creating exponential impact. But let me start with a story from a couple of weeks back. I took a half-day to think about my business, and another half-day to work on it with my own coach. It was a game-changer.I got much clearer on my vision,

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We just wrapped up Season 12 of the Impact Multiplier CEO Podcast, which we entitled “Making Time For Strategy”. Davina Stanley interviewed me about what inspired me to write the book and what some of the main messages are. Here are seven important lessons that emerged from those conversations. I do recommend you listen in to the full episodes, as

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“Being crazy-busy is just part of executive leadership, right?”This was a comment from a CEO client of mine, pulled in a million directions by her board, her team and her clients. And yet, I was reminded of another conversation with a CEO of a publicly traded business just a few days before. He’d explained how he’d

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How can you make the next twelve months truly extraordinary? I find that a fascinating question, because it takes us out of the sphere of New Year resolutions and incremental goal-setting and gets us thinking expansively and boldly. Regular readers will know that I’m a big proponent of exponential leadership – the idea of multiplying your impact instead of “adding” a

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These are turbulent and uncertain times. I want to share the story of a client who entered a new role, got knocked sideways almost immediately, and who learned some important lessons that I hope will be helpful to you. Business turbulence stressing you out? This story might help When Stella finally came back on the radar, she

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If you feel you have no time for the creative, strategic thinking that you know you need to be doing right now, here’s a resource that you’ll want to check out. We’ve just launched season 12 of The Impact Multiplier CEO Podcast. Davina Stanley interviews me about my new book, Making Time For Strategy and draws out some of

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I want to share a simple insight that has the potential to change the engagement and ownership of your organisation.The one insight you need before you can grow your team’s sense of ownershipOne of the leaders in our current Impact Accelerator programme, Bart, sends me a weekly reflection on his insights and progress. Last month the programme

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To understand how top leaders accomplish seemingly ‘impossible’ things with their businesses, carefully read this thread that I found on Reddit: Question: How can martial arts people punch through wooden and concrete blocks? Answer: I’ve been doing martial arts for over a decade, and I’ve got my share of experience punching and kicking through wooden boards and the

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If you’ve followed my writing for a while, you’ll be aware of how the leadership culture that we create is defined by the levels of support and challenge that we bring to those around us. Support involves a sense of personal care; challenge involves stretching people out of their comfort zone. We can map out these two dimensions as follows:

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You’re a high achiever. Perhaps you’re a business owner, a CEO or C-Suite leader, a rising star. Your “default future” is probably good — great, even. But if we start to dream and imagine a “preferred future” that’s even more impactful, your eyes will start to gleam and a new world of possibility will open up.I’ve

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In Season 9 of the Impact Multiplier CEO Podcast, which we entitled “Mission-driven CEOs”, I interviewed a variety of impressive Chief Executives about their sense of mission:What’s the impact they want to make beyond just the financials — in terms of the company mission and their personal leadership legacy?How do they put that into practice on a daily

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Two very quick ‘Xquadrant Insider’ exclusives for you today! Firstly, the cover design for my new book, Making Time For Strategy, has been finalised. Click here to see the LinkedIn post where I made the big reveal. (By the way, it’d be great if you’d leave a comment on the post to give the LinkedIn algorithm a nudge in the

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One of the participants in this year’s Impact Accelerator programme just had a life-changing insight… before the first session even started! They’d watched an introductory video and they were completing a brief worksheet in preparation for our first session. The worksheet made them think in some different ways about what it will take to be exponentially more successful in

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