The Leading Smart podcast is the show about Managing in the Brainpower Age. It’s a field guide to joys and challenges of leading and working in the modern workplace.
Stories, Ideas, & Insight
I’m your guide to the stories and ideas that I hope will inspire you to be a better leader in the world of knowledge work. I’ll be drawing from my own experience as a 40-year veteran of the corporate world, and also having been in the top HR job near the top of the Fortune 500. I’ve not only been a lifelong student of organizational dynamics, but also leader of some very large and successful teams. I’ll relate some of the lessons I’ve learned through the years, and provide insight on how to manage in the Brainpower Age.
A field guide to Managing in the Brainpower Age
Bite-sized Value
In each episode, we’ll explore everyday problems and provide practical tools you can use to be a better and smarter leader. The episodes are bite-sized, targeted to be about 20 minutes, just long enough to provide great value for your precious time. Each episode page also has room for your comments and feedback, or you can send your feedback to pod@clwill.com. Let me know what you think.
New episodes twice a month, on the 15th and the last day.
New episodes of the podcast are released semi-monthly, on the fifteenth and the last day. A bit like your paycheck. I hope you find it almost as useful.
The challenges of leading in the Brainpower age exist across a broad range of disciplines and industries. Whether it’s in the corner office, the classroom, the laboratory, the courtroom, or the studio, smart people can be difficult to hire, motivate, review, reward, or fire. Sometimes coping with these issues requires skills and techniques that aren’t obvious. Subscribe to the Leading Smart podcast and we’ll explore them together.
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Episodes
Brainpower Age
The Hit Man
Introducing the Leading Smart podcast — How a job in the car stereo business ended up being mostly about firing people. And how that lead to a lifelong fascination with management, organizations, and team building.
The Brainpower Age
How a simple question about failure of a single project lead to the most important research project of my life. And how that lead to the realization that everything about work has changed in the last few generations. We’ve entered the Brainpower Age.
Performance Reviews
Duck and Cover
How a brutal performance review meeting ended with me getting a stapler hurled at my head. And how that lead to one of my most steadfast rules: in the workplace, no surprises.
Annual Ritual
First episode of two looking into the annual ritual of performance reviews. This episode focuses on the process, and why it doesn’t have to be painful. If you’re willing to do it all the time.
Accentuate the Positive
A song from 1944 sets the tone for good employee feedback. This episode features an upbeat cover from 1972, and far too many sandwich metaphors, yet still offers hope for great performance reviews.
Hiring
Hunting Skills
Hiring senior level brainpower workers is much more than posting the job and sifting through the resumes. It’s beyond hiring, even beyond recruiting. It’s hunting. In this episode we look at two examples and see how to develop hunting skills.
Testing Limits
Hiring junior level brainpower workers can be overwhelming. There are simultaneously too many candidates and not enough good ones. Many organizations result to testing and other filters to cope. But this just makes the problem worse. In this episode we look into the limits of testing, and how to source great junior level talent.
Wonder Why
Interviewing brainpower workers is the search for intelligence, passion, communication skills, and a thirst for learning. There are lots of ways to do these interviews, but a softer touch is usually the key. In this episode we explore how to get the most from a brainpower interview.
Fits and Starts
One of the challenges of hiring brainpower workers is finding that “perfect fit”. But often when you do, that’s when you should start to worry. In this episode we explore why the perfect fit often isn’t and explore how to insure a great brainpower hire.
Soft Landing
Once you’ve decided on that great candidate, the next challenge is convincing them to take the job. Brainpower workers want more than just a paycheck and that makes this much more difficult. In this episode we explore how to land that great brainpower hire.
Vision
2020 Hindsight
A clear, crisp vision is the foundation for a successful project, especially one that involves brainpower workers. And a project with a poor, or no, vision is almost guaranteed to flounder. This episode begins a series on the importance, development, and communication of visions.
Clear View
How the greatest business failure of the 20th Century was largely caused by the lack of a good vision. And how success lies in the framework of Mission, Vision, Strategy, and Tactics. This second episode on vision explores how what you say impacts what you do.
Mark My Words
Why words matter, especially words you use for your mission and vision. We also explore how wasting words is an easy trap to fall into. In this third episode in the series on vision, we show how to craft a clear, crisp vision for your project.