Excel at Execution to Achieve your Strategy

By Matthew Levy As the economy gears up for another great year, managing growth is the game most businesses are playing.  If your company is going to excel at managing better and more predictable results, it must excel at managing execution. Typical Performance Management is Inadequate Typical employee performance management is inadequate even if it includes some formal goal setting and annual performance reviews.  The problem is that these rarely inspire true commitment to goals that align with strategy or the predictable achievement of these goals in any manageable way.  It also doesn’t create a performance culture or give management with the [...]

2017-02-14T16:18:50-05:00By |CEO, Getting Results, Managing Execution, Organizational Alignment, Strategy|0 Comments
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How to Prevent and Manage Family Business Conflict: Decision Making and the Family Business Constitution

by Matthew Levy Conflict among family members at home, at work, or in the board room can wreak havoc on individuals, family relationships and the stability of the family business. Managing decision making productively and preventing significant conflicts should be a primary objective for anyone in a family business. For the Family in Business there are three main causes of conflict: Lack of alignment as it relates to vision, values, expectations and policies The challenges of managing disagreements Strong emotions and sometimes even volatility The Family Business Constitution Every family in business together should have a Family Business Constitution, the [...]

2017-08-04T20:02:14-05:00By |CEO, Conflict Resolution, Executive Team, Family Business, Strategy|0 Comments
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Don’t Let Executive Team Dynamics Contaminate Year-End Planning and Results

SITUATION: Executives balance these three things simultaneously, at year-end: Ensuring results for this year, Planning strategy for next year, and Creating a budget, hopefully, based on that strategy to which all executives commit. Too often, strategy development gets rushed at year-end, lacks innovation, or it does not happen until after a budget is hacked out.  Critical conversations are avoided as executives pretend that the elephant in the room is not there. Little if any focus is put on the dysfunctional team dynamic that is contributing to the entire process being ineffective.  As a result, executives don’t align with the strategy, [...]

2016-02-05T23:00:15-05:00By |CEO, Communication, Conflict Resolution, Executive Team, Getting Results, Managing Execution, Organizational Alignment, Strategy, Uncategorized|0 Comments
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Overcome the Six Hurdles to Effective Execution Management

The Problem: People break promises and companies are bad at execution management, accountability and getting predictable results. The following are six barriers that are holding back  your company.  Putting in place an effective system for managing execution will allow your company to overcome these hurdles. Six Hurdles to Effective Execution Management: #1 People often don’t keep their promises Keeping promises are the bedrock, heart and soul, glue, and foundation of successful and predictable execution. Do your leaders demand that people do what they promise or do they consistently tolerate excuses? In companies where people keep their promises, goals are clear, [...]

2015-07-16T22:22:55-05:00By |CEO, Getting Results, Managing Execution, Organizational Alignment, Strategy, Uncategorized|2 Comments
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Mining the Gems of Strategy in a Year-End Review

Problem: Most management teams fail to take advantage of the most strategic conversation available to them at year end -- the one that unveils the hidden gems of learning that can have a profound impact both on next year’s strategy and on operational plans. What is the crucial conversation you ask? It’s the year-end review of the success and failures of the past year. Having this discussion with the entire executive team present and doing it in a thorough way ensures that the gems of strategy are mined, extracted and polished to spectacular brilliance, ready to be applied immediately when [...]

2013-12-18T13:34:05-05:00By |CEO, Executive Team, Strategy, Uncategorized|0 Comments
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Will Your Executive Team Dynamic Contaminate Year-End Planning?

by Matthew Levy A dysfunctional executive team dynamic will create a weaker strategy and a budget executives don’t really believe in or commit to.  A strongly aligned and effective executive team will develop a more innovative strategy and a better budget. So, one of the most important and timely decisions a CEO must make now is whether or not to address executive team dynamics as part of planning for next year. Problem: As we enter the tail en of the year, executives are balancing these three things simultaneously: Ensuring results for this year, Planning strategy for next year, and Creating a budget based [...]

2015-09-16T10:58:38-05:00By |CEO, Executive Team, Getting Results, Organizational Alignment, Strategy, Uncategorized|0 Comments
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End Sabotage and Cure Organizational Schizophrenia

Executives frequently disagree with decisions that the executive team – or the CEO – have already made.  Sometimes, we even disagree with how a decision was made.  However, after a decision is made, we make a choice to act in accordance with the decision or to act and speak consistently with what we wish the decision was.  While we don’t call it this enough, acting inconsistently with a decision that was made is – covertly or overtly and intentionally or unintentionally – an act of sabotage, negatively impacting the behaviors of others and diminishing the intended results. Furthermore, when we [...]

2017-06-23T11:11:43-05:00By |CEO, Executive Team, Getting Results, Managing Execution, Organizational Alignment, Strategy, Uncategorized|2 Comments
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Don’t Miss Your Numbers, Call a Time-Out

Don't miss your numbers this year. Now is the time to get the company back on track before it's too late. Call a time-out and get the executive team offsite to assess the company's progress to date, resolve all the issues, and make plans to insure success for the year. Here is how...

2014-02-09T10:36:34-05:00By |CEO, Executive Team, Getting Results, Managing Execution, Organizational Alignment, Strategy|0 Comments
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