I don’t know about you but it doesn’t matter if I’m sick for a day, am away at a conference for a day or two, or on vacation. When I get back to my computer, the situation is always the same – I have thousands of unread emails demanding attention. But it’s not just when …
We’ve all heard them, right? The crazy ideas that sound either so silly, or so illogical that we’re left wondering why anyone said them out loud in the first place. It’s what we call a stupid idea. At least that may be what we say in our head. Rarely do we call them stupid ideas …
Dan was a guy who worked at a power company. The company would put up power poles on construction sites so that the construction crew could plug in electrical equipment and get their work done. He did everything – sales, marketing, reporting, repair, installation, customer-on-boarding and more. In fact, every time the CEO needed someone …
One of the most challenging aspects of moving into leadership is the decision making required of leaders. And one of the hardest sets of decisions new leaders face is how to spend their time. Here is the bottom line: No one will manage your time for you. You’ll face tons of requests for meetings, which …
An elephant can weight up to 24,000 pounds and stand 13 feet tall. Yet it can be trapped by a chain or rope quite easily. The trick is that you use a heavy rope or chain when the elephant is a baby. For days it will pull against the rope. But all that happens is …
I’m not the first or last person to decide that I would like to create a conference that works the way I would like it to. Doesn’t every person who starts a conference do that? I’m certainly not the first or last person to try to do something unique or innovative when it comes to …
The Lema Guide to Planning Your Own Conference CONTINUE READING
Yesterday I raised a question that’s been very powerful for me as a leader. Today I want to share with you another question. More importantly, I want to share with you a different question than the one we normally ask. In the software space, where I lead people, we’re often asked for estimates. “How long …
Changing the question we ask to a better one CONTINUE READING
One of the most important questions you can ask as you lead people is this: “how often does this happen?” The reason it’s so powerful is because our default reaction can often be to overreact to whatever gets our attention. We create policies. We create rules. We create directives. All to protect ourselves from something. …
I was talking the other day to friends who recently noticed I’d started this blog (even as I’ve started writing again at ChrisLema.com). They asked how this blog was doing. Was I getting a lot of traffic? Did I have a way to monetize it? The underlying assumption, I think, is that it’s worth putting …
Write regularly – even if no one is reading CONTINUE READING
As leaders a lot of what you do is provide support for others. It’s what makes you a leader that others follow. But have you thought a lot about what you need? Have you thought about the kind of support you need? I’m not talking about virtual assistants and support to get your job done. …