Moments
With
Marty

There are fundamentally two types of people in the world: lifters and leaners. Lifters carry the burden for themselves and others… they take on more accountability than the average person, and they don’t rely on anyone else to make things happen. And leaners? Well they’re happy to let the lifters do the work! My observation […]

One of the things that characterizes a high-performing team is the ability to withstand and harness the value that lies in healthy disagreement. A few weeks ago, my TED talk was released, where I spoke about The Surprising Power of Constructive Conflict. It’s definitely worth 11:33 of your time to watch this. In the absence […]

There are literally thousands of articles and posts written every week about the attributes of great leaders. Humility, Transparency, Fallibility, Integrity. Although it’s fun and interesting to muse on these attributes, they lack clarity.  If you actually decided that you wanted to take action to develop one of these attributes, where would you start? What […]

It’s important to understand that the object of the exercise, at any level, and in any organization, is to get the best results you can with the resources you’ve been given (money, assets, people, time). And, at each new leadership level that you’re promoted to, the term best results is defined differently. In broad terms, […]

I know that the phrase, it’s a marathon, not a sprint, is a tired old cliche… but it just seemed to be appropriate for this moment.  And I can speak with some authority on the matter, at least, because I ran a few marathons back in the good old days: I’m talking about the days […]

If you’re in it for yourself, your people will never be in it for you. Ever.  I observed this throughout my corporate career, and came to see it as a fundamental truism of leadership. Self-seeking leaders can’t get the best out of their people, because it’s almost impossible to rally them to a higher purpose.  […]

We generally talk about stress like it’s a bad thing. Putting people under stress is something that many leaders try to avoid. Why? Well, if you put people under stress, then maybe they’ll feel bad and won’t like you anymore. And because of our natural conflict aversion, we want our people to like us. We […]

Have you ever questioned your boss about a particular task, and at the end of a brief exchange, he simply says: “Look, just do it, OK?”  I call these leaders “Nike bosses”, for obvious reasons. Although I’m sure no one sets out to become a Nike boss, sometimes it’s simply the product of a leader […]

It can be a little daunting to take on a new role, especially when it’s at a higher level than the roles you’ve previously held.  And it doesn’t matter whether you’ve been promoted internally, or you’ve been appointed from outside the company: you need to set strong expectations right from the get go. It’s really […]

In my experience, simplicity goes hand-in-hand with focus. You’ve probably heard the expression “trying to boil the ocean”. This creates a great visual of what happens when you spread your attention too thinly to try to achieve a broad range of outcomes, and ultimately achieve very little. Do you remember as a child taking a […]