My Guests This is a very special episode of In The Trenches: In today’s episode, I will be interviewing 4 different CEOs of 4 different SMBs, and asking them just a single question: “What are some of the seemingly small changes you’ve made that have had the largest impacts?” When taking over a new business,Continue reading “The Smallest Changes That Had the Largest Impacts: 4 CEO Case Studies”
Tag Archives: culture
Mike Zani, CEO of The Predictive Index: Hiring, Personality Profiling Tools, Working with a Partner, and Other Lessons from 20 Years as a CEO
My Guests My guest today is Mike Zani, CEO of The Predictive Index. The Predictive Index serves more than 9,000 clients across 142 countries, helping businesses optimize their hiring and team composition decisions through a combination of behavioral science, software, and professional consulting from the world’s top workplace behavior specialists. Mike has been CEO ofContinue reading “Mike Zani, CEO of The Predictive Index: Hiring, Personality Profiling Tools, Working with a Partner, and Other Lessons from 20 Years as a CEO”
A.J. Wasserstein: Reflections of a Founder, CEO, Investor and Educator
My Guest My guest today is A.J. Wasserstein, the Eugene F. Williams, Jr. Lecturer in the Practice of Management at the Yale School of Management. His research, writing, and teaching concentrates on search funds, entrepreneurship, programmatic acquisitions, and small businesses. In addition to his role as an educator, A.J. is also a private investor inContinue reading “A.J. Wasserstein: Reflections of a Founder, CEO, Investor and Educator”
Knowing Who, When, and How to Fire
I will never forget the first time that I had to fire somebody. In the days, hours and minutes leading up to the meeting that morning, sleep was elusive, my heart was racing, my mind was completely incapable of focusing on anything else, and the sense of existential dread growing in the pit of myContinue reading “Knowing Who, When, and How to Fire”
Employee Burnout and The Great Resignation
My Guest My guest today is Carin-Isabel Knoop, Executive Director of the Harvard Business School Case Research & Writing Group. Carin has spent decades writing cases on managers and leaders all over the world across a wide array of functions and industries. In 2019, alongside co-author John Quelch, Carin published Compassionate Management of Mental HealthContinue reading “Employee Burnout and The Great Resignation”
A Leader’s Most Important Skill
Listen to This Blog Post Though effective leaders tend to possess a multitude of different skills and abilities, my experience as a CEO taught me that the most important skill for any leader to possess is that of clear and effective communication. Indeed, a CEO’s strategy is only as good as her ability to communicateContinue reading “A Leader’s Most Important Skill”
Implementing a Formal Operating System Like EOS or the Rockefeller Habits
Listen to this Blog Post Throughout recent history, there has been substantial growth in the number of companies who have decided to implement formal “operating systems” to govern certain strategic and operational decisions within their businesses. Though there are many operating systems in existence today, two of the most widely used systems are EOS (theContinue reading “Implementing a Formal Operating System Like EOS or the Rockefeller Habits”
Why Your Company Needs a Set of Core Values (or Why Yours May Not be Having an Impact)
Listen To This Blog Post Particularly in my early years as a CEO, I couldn’t help but roll my eyes whenever somebody suggested that I needed to codify and publish a set of core values for my company. Weren’t core values the tired, hollow, and meaningless platitudes that companies created simply because they felt theyContinue reading “Why Your Company Needs a Set of Core Values (or Why Yours May Not be Having an Impact)”