Moments
With
Marty

More and more leaders are telling me that they’re totally burnt out. The factors behind the increasing levels of work stress are many and varied – burnout is a complex issue, and it’s become a really hot topic in the last couple of years. I’m pretty confident, though, that if you apply a couple of […]

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 […]

I love Malcolm Gladwell: his book Outliers is one of my all-time favorites. When Gladwell talks, I listen: even if I don’t agree with his views, they’re always incredibly thought-provoking. You probably know that decision-making is a subject that’s close to my heart: it’s a critical part of strong leadership. So when I heard Gladwell […]

There’s no doubt that systemic bias exists in hiring – but sometimes, even with the best intentions, it’s really difficult to improve diversity. Quite often, you’re simply dealing with a shallow pool of talent. For example, in engineering and technology-based industries, the pool of candidates is still predominantly male. And this probably starts quite early […]

It’s important that we understand how all the little choices we make add up to potentially significant consequences – but in reality, there are big decisions and there are small decisions.  So what are “high-impact” decisions… they’re the ones that really test you… the ones that scare you a little (or maybe a lot)… the […]

We outsource a lot of things, in business and in life. How do we decide what to outsource, and what to do ourselves? In the 1990s, outsourcing became all the rage, particularly in the IT industry, where I was working. But the principles behind outsourcing have their roots in the economic theory of comparative advantage, […]

I talk quite a bit about strong leadership, a term that typifies the style of leadership that I advocate on the NBL podcast. It’s not arrogant, controlling, or aggressive… rather, it’s compassionate and empathetic. But, unlike many new-age leadership philosophies, it requires leaders to do the hard things that stretch themselves, and their people to […]

How do you, as a leader, set appropriate boundaries in your work relationships? How do you strike the balance between establishing trust-based, caring relationships with your people, and maintaining professional distance?  Call me overly-cautious, but I’ve come to the view over the years that leaders simply should not have romantic relationships in the workplace.  I […]

As a leader, if you don’t want your business to suffer the impact of poor decisions that are driven by fear, it’s useful to be able to recognize the triggers that indicate you’re in a fear response state. If you can sense, and then short-circuit your physiological reactions as they arise, you’ll be in a […]

I used to say that, with any team, nothing happens unless a leader makes it happen. But, to be more accurate, I now say that nothing different happens unless a leader makes it happen! A leader… that’s you, right!? To make any serious change requires a change of culture—the way we do things around here—and […]