Moments
With
Marty

In a world where we have ready access to a mountain of information on pretty much everything, decision-making processes in many companies have become more and more about data analytics. Relying more on facts, and less on opinions is a good thing, right?! But, in my experience, the best decisions strike a balance between quantitative […]

You may have heard me talk about the leadership myth that “happy workers are productive workers”…  … conventional wisdom says that, if you want a team to perform, just keep your people happy! This, in turn will increase their engagement… which in turn will motivate them to perform. Bulls!t… Let’s look at this from the […]

A lot of people seem to think that the most certain way to build job security is to make themselves indispensable. But indispensability isn’t always a good thing.  It comes in two flavors, each of which are completely different. The first form of indispensability, which is generally desirable, is when you’re seen as someone who […]

Virtually every company has natural tensions built into its DNA. For example, there’s the classic rub point between sales and operations… it’s easy to sell something, but then – your company has to deliver it. Sales people have a natural tendency to “over sell” a product, sometimes to the point where it’s almost impossible for […]

In these days of competitive labor markets, greater employee mobility, and increasing recruitment costs, our emphasis has to be on growing talent from within. This requires a razor sharp focus on performance, potential, and capability development. Sometimes, it’s best to bring someone in from outside (for example, when you need to lead a major performance […]

Many leaders use the word “value” with gay abandon… they say things like, “Come on, I want you all to add value”, or “We need to create value for our customers.” But for many of the people that this is designed to motivate and encourage, it’s almost meaningless. There’s no tangible way for them to […]

Before we get into today’s Moment, I just want to give a trigger warning… I’m going to use an expression that some people may find confronting or disturbing.  I thought about this carefully, and decided to go ahead, because I believe it needs to be this graphic to get the point across with impact. So, […]

In Ep.254, which we released about 18 months ago, I had the pleasure of interviewing Scott J Miller. Scott is the host of FranklinCovey’s On Leadership podcast.  Over the 6 years that he’s been hosting On Leadership, Scott has interviewed some of the all-time greats in leadership, business, and life. He has interviewed household names […]

If I distilled the key things that helped me to grow rapidly over the years, what would they be?  I’ve often said that leaders are learners, but you could spend a lot of time consuming information, without necessarily getting traction: and by traction, I mean gaining the wisdom and insight that would differentiate you as […]

The proverbial high performing team has become a leadership cliché. I can’t count the number of leaders who claim to have built a high performing team (often, despite objective evidence to the contrary). But what if the culture of the organization that you’re leading in is actually a low performance culture? How would you know, […]