by Michael Holland Crucible: A place or occasion of severe test or trial. Marine Corp recruits culminate their boot camp training with “The Crucible”, a 54 hour strenuous training exercise meant to simulate typical combat situations wherein recruits apply everything they’ve learned to that point in their training. The “exercise” includes 48 miles of [...]
by Michael Holland Great leaders portray an image of knowing the outcome of events well ahead of time. They seem to visualize the future and know exactly when and how to turn the motivational dials of the human team machine to exact great performance. For the rest of us aspiring leaders, we have moments of [...]
by Michael Holland Can a leader be impoverished? Absolutely! Impoverished leaders detach themselves from their teams, and basically allow their teams to manage themselves. Often these leaders “Delegate and Disappear.” While delegation is a strong and effective way to manage, delegating without follow up, not providing adequate direction and not keeping track of an individual’s [...]
by Michael Holland In a recent discussion with a CEO regarding her career path up through the finance function of an organization, it was revealed that she still maintained full functional responsibility for finance and accounting since she had chosen to not replace herself as CFO nor had she replaced her prior role of Controller. [...]
by Michael Holland Michael Phelps won the 200 meter butterfly in the 2008 Olympics by seven-tenths of a second – and set a world record – while swimming blind the last 100 meters as his goggles filled with water. He had practiced his race so many times in his mind seeing every action, every movement, [...]
By Michael Holland Question to Ponder: Why have organizations invested such large sums of money to fund supervisors, team leaders, managers, project managers, regional managers, associate directors, directors, senior directors, VPs, senior VPs, CFOs, CAOs, CIOs, COOs, and CEOs? A very intriguing theme from the book The Smart Swarm: How to Work Efficiently, Communicate Effectively, and [...]
by Michael Holland The interesting thing about people coming together in organizations is that they tend to create a mini-society and this society will have its own personality, rules, values and behaviors. Leaders may tend to underestimate the ingrained culture within these mini-societies and overestimate their ability to change these mini-societies with simple [...]
by Michael Holland Assessing the impact of an organization’s leadership reveals an odd, almost indescribable foggy, murky blob of an answer. We can plot out a nifty graph that shows the maturity of leaders based on facts about time in the role, education, depth and breadth of assignments, success of attaining metrics, employee retention, performance, [...]
by Michael Holland In one of the highly tense scenes in the movie Top Gun, the fighter pilot scans his radar screen while working the controls of his fighter jet trying to line up the crosshairs on the enemy jet he’s chasing. The crosshairs align, the screen changes color to red and a loud tone [...]
by Michael Holland Have you used Google Maps Street View in the past? What a great way to drop in and see the actual destination of your trip. You can see the building, the street, parking even what restaurants might be close by. A professional roadmap helps you to document where you’d like to head [...]
