Running A Strategic Business Review
A quietly disappointed client can look exactly like a satisfied one until the renewal conversation. Here’s how to conduct a quarterly Strategic Business Review.
A quietly disappointed client can look exactly like a satisfied one until the renewal conversation. Here’s how to conduct a quarterly Strategic Business Review.
Words I don’t like: “I would prefer not to.” – Bartleby Five words Bartleby used instead of quitting or arguing. He just stopped caring, with an eerie calm, a quiet refusal of a man who’d decided showing up wasn’t worth it anymore. Herman Melville wrote “Bartleby” in 1853, but I’ve sat with enough CEOs to know that every workplace today has one. Not always this extreme, just present. Not that you are doing anything wrong, you’re pulling every lever you know, and nothing moves, because it isn’t about burnout or bad culture fit. It’s a brain thing. Neuroscience calls it
Most managers make the same mistake. They choose one leadership style and apply it to everyone and everything. Some default to micromanaging with lots of direction and minimal support, others pride themselves on being “hands-off” and delegating everything to direct reports. The problem? Neither approach works across the board. Leadership isn’t one-size-fits-all. People need different kinds of leadership depending on the skill or goal they’re working on. Even your A Players (the ones you trust to run the show) can feel like beginners when they tackle something brand new. Today, I’m going to teach you about Situational Leadership, which is
Two weeks ago, during a strategic business review with one of our fastest-growing clients, they asked me a question that stopped me in my tracks: “Mike, how do you manage your time to run Malloy Industries, coach CEOs, teach Georgetown students, be a present father/husband, AND still have time to think strategically?” The answer? I don’t manage time. I leverage energy. 4 Types of Professional Time Here’s an overview of the 4 types of professional time Management Time – #1 most common type of professional time. This is where you spend the majority of time in meetings, reading/sending emails, Slack
Change is everywhere: in business, leadership, sales, and even parenting. Change is hard. The instinct to push harder often backfires. What if, instead of pushing, we removed the barriers to change? Inspired by Jonah Berger’s book The Catalyst, let’s explore how to REDUCE resistance and create change. REDUCE = Reduce Reactance, Ease Endowment, shrink Distance, alleviate Uncertainty, and find Corroborating Evidence The Catalyst Approach: Make Change Happen Want to persuade customers, employees, or even your kids? Stop pushing, start removing barriers and resistance! Reduce Reactance – The Art of Enabling Change Without Pushback Nobody likes being told what to do.
Introduction In our last Business Bites, we tackled the challenges of balancing the maker’s schedule with the manager’s schedule. Today, we’ll dive deeper into advanced time-blocking strategies to create more time for what matters most to you and elevate your productivity. Here are five strategies to help you take control of your time and maximize your efficiency. Creative Before Reactive Save yourself from your inbox and set the stage for flow by being creative before reactive. Make a Map the night before (in any format you like) with a list of projects, tasks, and activities you plan to complete the
Introduction We’re diving into something that’s crucial for all of us: managing our time better. Whether you’re a CEO, fractional executive, manager, or analyst, how you plan and prepare your schedule really makes a difference. Let’s get into some smart strategies that can help you make the most of your time. Navigating the Maker’s and Manager’s Schedules Paul Graham coined the terms maker’s schedule and manager’s schedule. Understanding and navigating the complex push-pull between these schedules is crucial for your success, your team’s success, and your company’s success. Let’s explore practical strategies you can experiment with to create more time
If you reliably deliver on what you promise other people but routinely drop the goals you set for yourself, you're probably an Obliger. It's one of the four personality types in Gretchen Rubin's Four Tendencies framework, and for CEOs it's worth understanding, because the Obliger pattern quietly shapes how you spend your time. What an Obliger Is Rubin sorts people by how they respond to expectations. Upholders meet both inner and outer expectations, Questioners meet expectations only if they make sense, Rebels resist both, and Obligers readily meet outer expectations but struggle with inner ones. Obligers are the dependable backbone
Most CEOs manage by answering: someone brings a problem, you solve it. That feels efficient and quietly makes you the bottleneck. Michael Bungay Stanier's The Coaching Habit flips it: by asking a few good questions instead of jumping to advice, you get your team thinking for themselves, do less of their work, and have more impact. The whole practice runs on seven questions you can use in any conversation, even over email. The 7 Questions, in Brief "What's on your mind?" (start fast) "And what else?" (the best answer is rarely the first) "What's the real challenge here for you?"
A crucial conversation is any discussion where the stakes are high, opinions differ, and emotions run strong, like letting someone go, confronting a co-CEO, pushing back on an investor, telling a key client no. The good news is that handling them well is a learnable skill, not a personality trait. Before you walk into one, our Coaching Conversation Question Card, gives you the questions you need to keep a hard talk calm and on track. How to have a crucial conversation The method (from the book Crucial Conversations) comes down to a few moves. Start with the heart: get clear
A quietly disappointed client can look exactly like a satisfied one until the renewal conversation. Here’s how to conduct a quarterly Strategic Business Review.
Words I don’t like: “I would prefer not to.” – Bartleby Five words Bartleby used instead of quitting or arguing. He just stopped caring, with an eerie calm, a quiet
Most managers make the same mistake. They choose one leadership style and apply it to everyone and everything. Some default to micromanaging with lots of direction and minimal support, others
Two weeks ago, during a strategic business review with one of our fastest-growing clients, they asked me a question that stopped me in my tracks: “Mike, how do you manage
Change is everywhere: in business, leadership, sales, and even parenting. Change is hard. The instinct to push harder often backfires. What if, instead of pushing, we removed the barriers to
Introduction In our last Business Bites, we tackled the challenges of balancing the maker’s schedule with the manager’s schedule. Today, we’ll dive deeper into advanced time-blocking strategies to create more
Introduction We’re diving into something that’s crucial for all of us: managing our time better. Whether you’re a CEO, fractional executive, manager, or analyst, how you plan and prepare your
If you reliably deliver on what you promise other people but routinely drop the goals you set for yourself, you're probably an Obliger. It's one of the four personality types
Most CEOs manage by answering: someone brings a problem, you solve it. That feels efficient and quietly makes you the bottleneck. Michael Bungay Stanier's The Coaching Habit flips it: by
A crucial conversation is any discussion where the stakes are high, opinions differ, and emotions run strong, like letting someone go, confronting a co-CEO, pushing back on an investor, telling