The Stuff Growth Is Made Of

The Art of Leading- Stacey Schultz

As part of the leadership series I am interviewing members of my Vistage group - leaders from different industries and sectors. Stacey Schultz is the President of Educate LLC

Creating and leading accountable teams

Conventional wisdom says that teams outperform a group of individuals. Reality, however, has proven that this is the case only if the team is functional and accountable. The truth is that most teams, left to their own devices, are dysfunctional and therefore fail to meet our performance expectations. As a result many leaders and organizations get frustrated with teams and find themselves struggling to manage accountability in their organization. Our discussion will speak to, although at a high level, the four characteristics common to all highly functional teams and the one that gets them to become accountable, sources of all real issues, and the secret to getting people to actually speak for themselves and how to build the trust levels necessary to make that possible.

The Art of Leading: Captivating Leadership Narratives

First interview with one of my founding members of my Vistage CEO Peer Advisory Group Steven Toboroff. Steven is the CEO of Woolco Foods the premier broadline food distributor for hotels, restaurants, bakeries, institutions and food caterers in the area. Our conversation focused on Steven's journey to his current role, advice he would give his younger self, and Steven shares the core tenets of how he leads by example and holds himself accountable. 

Turn on the Headlights

Turn on the headlights is about reviewing your financials with key tools and strategies to enable a forward looking view. You cannot guide your company into the future by facing backward. If the only financial documents you reference are rearward facing, you have no forward illumination.

Interview with Rob Fishman -CEO’s guide to building a world class sales organization.

A world class sales organization includes 4 key areas -- strategy, structure, staff and skills. Each of these areas - starting with the foundation of strategy - are critical to driving a successful sales function. Within strategy an organization needs to think about how they are going to maximize revenue - what clients do they want to keep, who do they want to attain and recapture and how are they going to expand.

An interview with Merle Marting - Go Grow!

Forbes Magazine has noted that 82% of Fortune 500 CEO’s felt their organization did an effective job of strategic planning, only 14% of the same CEO’s say they did an effective job of implementing the strategy. 

Interview with Joss Milner, Cash Flow Story

All businesses are trying to do better which translates into making more money. This requires the business to improve profits and increase cash flow which in turn will drive up the value of their business. Because most businesses have limited understanding of their numbers, it is challenging for them to improve their performance and measure it effectively.
 

Culture as a Strategic Competitive Advantage

Culture can be such an elusive topic.  David Friedman shows us how to intentionally create and "institutionalize" a high-performing culture in any organization. Based on his many years of experience as a successful CEO, Friedman "de-mystifies" culture by making it surprisingly simple, practical, and easy to implement.

A Conversation with Edgar Papke - True Alignment

On this episode of The Stuff Growth Is Made Of, I'm joined by Edgar Papke of True Alignment. Edgar is dedicated to helping leaders, organizations, and teams improve their alignment to achieve greater levels of innovation, success and fulfillment.

Three important words to help you live your extraordinary why

As you look at your own extraordinary why, living a successful life of significance, if you only had 3-5 years left in your current role, or 10 years left in your career, what impact and focus would you want to have for that remaining time? Most people when they get to the end of their life or end of their career tend reflect on 3 broad areas -- forgiveness, remembrance (their legacy) and significance (impact).