Our 10 Most Popular Blog Posts of 2020

Leadership

It’s been an unprecedented year marked by uncertainty and disruption. Let’s face it, many of us cannot wait for 2020 to be over. But before we dive into 2021, we took a look back at which of this year’s posts got the most buzz. Some of our most popular posts were book lists, whether you were interested in upping your leadership game or deepening your understanding of racism and inequity in America. Other popular posts dealt with how to lead yourself and your team through the COVID-19 pandemic.

Regardless of the nature of each post, we tried to find a lesson or two that you could take away in 750 words or less. Something you could apply in your office (virtual or in-person) that day, or that might sharpen your skills as a leader.

Here are the top ten posts we shared to serve that purpose:

10. 15 Steps Lincoln Took to Lead a Divided Country

It’s been just over two weeks since George Floyd called out for his mother as his life was callously drained away by a white police officer in broad daylight on a Minneapolis street. Mr. Floyd’s death ignited a powder keg in America that spread around the world. Images of his murder, followed by buildings in flames, followed by national guard troops positioned on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial showed the worst of what can happen when we lack the kind of leadership that helps us navigate the path between chaos and control. [Read more]

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9. 6 Books to Read During this Era of Isolation

You know the expression found money? When you put on a jacket that you haven’t worn in a while and find a $20 bill in the pocket? There is such a thing as found time too. Millions of people now have extra time on their hands during this era of isolation. You can choose to spend yours toggling between 24-hour “Breaking News” reports, or taking advantage of the opportunity to read a good book. We’ve gathered six titles for perspective on leading through a crisis, and beautifully written prose that is once both personal and profound. Spend this found time wisely to help you fend off a mindset of isolation and focus on a good read. [Read more]

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8. 3 Things You Should Be Doing Right Now to Lead Your Team Through This Crisis

You’re probably getting flooded with free advice right now. You suddenly have access to everything from ways to indulge yourself without breaking the budget, to virtual art and culture exhibits to unlimited, free training and development during the coronavirus. The options for what to do during this unprecedented time in history can be overwhelming. If you’re facing a deluge of distractions right now, chances are that your team members are too. Now, more than ever, it’s critical that you lean in and take some basic steps as a leader to keep your team focused and productive. [Read more]

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7. Servant Leadership: 50 Years After Greenleaf Penned the Essay

The year 2020 marks the 50th anniversary of the origins of servant leadership. Robert K. Greenleaf was a mid-20th century iconoclast who argued that leaders should use their positions of power to help their teams succeed rather than for self-interest and personal glory. It’s a powerful concept that has been put to the test by many organizations, including Southwest Airlines and WD-40. [Read more]

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6. 5 Resources To Help You Develop A More Diverse and Inclusive Workplace

No matter who we are or where we come from, our assumptions and beliefs are shaped by our experiences, our upbringing, our race, our gender, religion, and culture. Those beliefs help us navigate and make sense of everyday life. But they can also mean that we believe that there is no difference between our perceptions and reality. For leaders, that means we must continuously question our assumptions and value the voices of people who are not like us to help us assess reality correctly. [Read more]

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5. 10 Ways to Improve Your Conversation Skills When You Disagree

Unfriend anyone on Facebook lately? Avoiding someone because you’re afraid that the subject of politics, religion, or even the weather will come up? In a world that is growing more polarized by the day, there may be no more important skill than being able to hold a meaningful conversation with another human being. In order to free yourself from filter bubbles, radio host and TEDx speaker Celeste Headlee suggests ten ways to improve your conversation skills. [Read more]

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4. 6 TED Talks from 2019 to Share with Your Leadership Team

It’s time to decide how you want to lead your organization in 2020. How did your leadership team impact organizational culture, and, ultimately, performance, in 2019? Were they too busy focusing on daily demands to read case studies and dig through reports about the latest leadership topics? Since 2006, TED Talks have provided accessible content on topics that stimulate new ideas about unexplored topics. [Read more]

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3. 7 of the Best Leadership Books to Add to Your Wish List this Holiday Season

In a year marked by disruption and uncertainty, this holiday season is the perfect time to read and reflect. We’ve selected a list of seven titles – from nature to biographies, from history to current events and re-imagining capitalism itself – these works are original, enjoyable, and provocative. [Read more]

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2. 8 Books that Deepen Our Understanding of Race and Racism in America

This year has given Americans the opportunity to face some ugly truths about our country. The torch that was lit when George Floyd was murdered on Memorial Day continues to burn day and night. Under that light, American citizens are daring to step out of the protection of their houses and step into the public square to debate issues such as freedom, patriotism, policing, and racism. [Read more]

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1. Meet 5 Graduates of an Elite Program for Transitioning Special Ops Team Members

For the past five years, I’ve had the privilege of serving as a pro bono coach for a San Diego-based nonprofit called The Honor Foundation. The program offers a 120-hour, MBA-style curricula that serves as a bridge for members of the Special Operations forces of the military to transition from service and discover what’s next on their career path. Thanks to The Honor Foundation, these men and women have the tools they need to confidently enter the workforce with pride and a sure footing. They are prepared to take the leap of faith that the civilian world will honor their service, embrace their elite training, and place them in positions worthy of their talents. [Read more]

Question: What thought leaders did you follow most in 2020? Did you learn anything that helped you become a better leader?

Driven by the premise that excellence is the result of aligning people, purpose and performance, Center for Executive Excellence facilitates training in leading self, leading teams and leading organizations. To learn more, subscribe to receive CEE News!

3 Things I Value About 2020: Reflections From a CEO

Leadership

I learned so much this year. As much as I desperately want 2020 to be over – and as much as I know that the restrictions of living and working during a pandemic will not miraculously disappear in 2021 – I truly value the new skills, insights, and relationships that I built this year. Capturing some of those here feels like the best use of this treasured space:

Lesson #1 – Even though it’s happening to you at the same time it’s happening to your team, you’re still the leader. 

I remember the weekend after our governor declared a stay at home order in late March. While my family wrestled with what stay-at-home would look like and my weekend grocery shopping trip looked like a scene from a post-apocalyptic movie, I realized on Sunday night that my team needed to hear from me first thing Monday morning. I sent an email at 7:20 a.m. that started, “In light of the escalating news about the spread of the coronavirus, I wanted to take a minute at the start of the week to let you know that your health and safety are my first priority…”

 Lesson #2 – Let go of perfectionism and pivot through the plot twists. 

When my team sat down to discuss our responsibility for helping our clients and readers navigate the late spring and summer of 2020, we decided to provide free content in the form of Zoom leadership webinars and virtual panel discussions. We’d built a reputation for delivering seamless, hiccup-free, in-person content, but shifting to content that depended on technology that we didn’t have 100% control over was a leap into the abyss of vulnerability. We quickly learned that audio will not always line up with video, dogs will bark, and plot twists that we could not plan for would surely happen. We relaxed our pursuit of perfectionism and focused on delivering quality content that mattered – dogs and all.

Lesson #3 – Shift our paradigm from “When will these changes end so that we can go back to normal?” to “How can we stay perpetually curious and innovate to help our clients thrive in the 4th Industrial Revolution?” 

Resistance to change runs deep. Our brains are hardwired for predictability and our organizations are designed for efficiency. But, the clients that have reached out to us for help are reckoning with the fact that the best laid plans quickly fade in a world of global pandemics and cyber attacks. The logical systems that they’ve relied on to plan and execute strategy took a gut punch in 2020. Our job now is to help our clients recognize that the Fourth Industrial Revolution is well underway and that their existence depends on not waiting for things to return to normal, but to thrive in a world that requires perpetual curiosity and innovation.

2020 also helped me learn: 1) a LOT of new recipes, 2) that dogs can develop a nasty limp if you take them walking for 30 miles a week; and 3) that I can form strong relationships with entirely new people by being physically distanced, but socially connected.

Driven by the premise that excellence is the result of aligning people, purpose and performance, Center for Executive Excellence facilitates training in leading self, leading teams and leading organizations. To learn more, subscribe to receive CEE News!

Doing Well By Doing Good: 12 Companies That Got It Right in 2020

Leadership

The best organizations today understand that culture is their strongest asset and can be the glue to retaining top talent. Whether you nurture it or not, you have a culture. It may be empowering or toxic. Either way, the results are showing up on your bottom line.

Here are the 12 companies we featured in CEE News this year that show how doing well and doing good are not mutually exclusive.

1. In September 1970, economist Milton Friedman argued in an article for the New York Times Magazine that “the social responsibility of business is to increase its profits.” 50 years since that publication, leaders are still struggling with what, exactly, the social purpose of business should be. That struggle is being chronicled by Carl Erickson, Founder and Executive Board Chair of Atomic Object, a custom software design and development firm headquartered in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Erickson shares the existential angst behind the company’s vision for lasting for 100 years in the blog Great Not Big. [Read More] 

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2. If you start a new business this year, can you imagine it still thriving in the year 2110? 90 years ago, George Jenkins opened the first Publix Food Store in Winter Haven, Florida. Today, the business thrives not because of ping pong tables or kombucha on tap, but because of the enduring philosophy of treating people with dignity and giving them a stake in the company’s success. The Publix Super Markets of 2020 is the largest employee-owned grocery chain in the United States fueled by over 200,000 dedicated women and men. Jenkins’ philosophy of putting people first has landed Publix recognition as one of one of Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For 22 years in a row, the South’s Best Grocery Store by Southern Living magazine (2018), and No. 2 among the Top Companies for Social Responsibility by the Harris Poll (2017). [Read More] 

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3. According to the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization, 1.3 billion tons of food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted each year. In Canada, 58% of all food produced is wasted, according to a report by the food bank Second Harvest. Nada, Vancouver’s first zero-waste grocery store, was founded by Alison Carr and Brianne Miller. As a marine biologist, Miller witnessed the mass of plastics swirling in the oceans, most of which was tied to food packaging. She realized the grocery store system was broken, and asked a simple question. What if food was just food again? [Read More] 

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4. Last week, the global number of confirmed deaths from the coronavirus surpassed 50,000 and cases topped 1 million. With cases on the rise, corporations are stepping up to help support people in need of assistance and flatten the curve, like a program just rolled out by Expensify to support SNAP, the United States’ largest anti-hunger program. [Read More]

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5. While most restaurants in America are shuttered, White House Italian Steak House in Anaheim, California, is hammered. Twice a week, cars line up by the hundreds, turning the fine dining experience into the ambiance of a Nascar pit stop. Owner Bruno Serato knows that most guests of this popup, bi-weekly drive through can pay no more than a heartfelt “thank you”. And that’s just fine by him. Bruno and his team are catering to the growing legions of the desperate. It’s a mission for which he is very well suited. He bought the mansion-turned-restaurant in 1987, and started serving Northern Italian cuisine in the style of his home in Verona, Italy. [Read More] 

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6. Brian Halligan was vacationing on Martha’s Vineyard in 2006, weighing the pros and cons of launching Hubspot. “One day,” according to Halligan “I’m looking at a book of cartoons from The New Yorker, and the first cartoon I open to shows this dog who’s just sitting at a computer on the Internet. A second dog is looking over his shoulder, like, what the heck are you doing on the Internet? And the dog on the Internet looks at the other guy and says, ‘You know, the great thing about the Internet is nobody knows you’re a dog.’” [Read More] 

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7. Jeffrey Costello and Robert Tagliapietra had just moved JCRT, their direct-to-consumer shirt company, to a new office on Pier 59 in New York City when New York’s stay-at-home order was issued in mid-March of 2020. Founded in 2016, JCRT is a modern menswear studio where craft meets tech through responsibly manufactured fashion. Their work has been exhibited at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and is in the permanent collections of The Victoria and Albert Museum and Museum at FIT. Heartsick that their beloved city was the epicenter of the Covid-19 outbreak, the couple immediately set to work to so something to help. [Read More] 

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8. If you’ve worn out a pair of walking shoes to break out of your Covid orbit, you might consider ordering your next pair from Allbirds. Founder Tim Brown, a native of New Zealand, was well versed in the qualities of merino wool. Inherently curious, Brown began asking himself why such a remarkable, sustainable resource was virtually absent in the footwear industry. And with that spirit of wonder, the Allbirds journey began. After years of researching and tinkering, Brown teamed up with Joey Zwillinger, an engineer and renewables expert. Together, they crafted a revolutionary wool fabric made specifically for footwear. The outcome? An entirely new category of shoes inspired by natural materials, and an ongoing mantra to create better things in a better way. [Read More] 

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9. Once a week, the employees at the HR Software company Workday get a two-question survey. On #FeedbackFriday, employees might be asked first about their relationship with their manager, and then to reflect on their own mental and physical health. The questions vary from week to week, but the survey creates a robust data set of responses from over 10,000 employees that can be mined to help ensure the company’s culture stays on track. From the day that the idea for the company was sketched out over lunch at Jax Truckee Diner in California in 2005, co-founders Aneel Bhusri and Dave Duffield resolved to build a company that would scale by tapping into a rich tapestry of diverse talent. [Read More] 

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10. 2020 has challenged leaders in ways they never expected. Outside of the healthcare industries, corporate leaders may feel unequipped to navigate the medical complexities that come with leading through a pandemic. Even the most seasoned leaders who’ve won accolades for setting vision, values, strategy, and culture have little understanding of the many unknowns that this pandemic and future ones might present. Yet, organizations now have a life or death role to play in protecting the health of employees, customers, and the public. One organization, Constellation Brands, has decided to add a new executive to the C-Suite – a Chief Medical Officer. [Read More] 

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11. Rajesh Anandan and his MIT roommate, Art Shectman, founded Ultranautswith one goal in mind: to prove that neurodiversity and autism could be a competitive advantage in business. “There is an incredible talent pool of adults on the autistic spectrum that has been overlooked for all the wrong reasons,” said 46-year-old Anandan in a recent interview with BBC. “People who haven’t had a fair shot to succeed at work, because of workplace and workflow and business practices that aren’t particularly effective for anyone but are especially damaging for anyone who is wired differently.” [Read More] 

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12. A little over one year ago this month, a young woman was hired to be a cashier at The Bazaar, Inc., a family-owned merchandising business in Chicago that has been around for three generations. When she walked in looking for a job, she seemed capable and bright and willing to work hard, and so she was extended an offer to come on board. She was thrilled—and so was her mother. [Read More] 

 

Driven by the premise that excellence is the result of aligning people, purpose and performance, Center for Executive Excellence facilitates training in leading self, leading teams and leading organizations. To learn more, subscribe to receive CEE News!