Tune in to an episode from my other podcast, All There Is,  for some relevant thoughts on leadership and why it is the thing we need most right now. 

Authentic Leaders provide Vision, Unity, Inspiration and Strength, and we all know it when we see it.

What the World Needs Now, is Leadership, sweet Leadership, it's the only thing that there's just too little of....

The book is available! Here to Lead: Mastering the Art of Leadership In Order to Execute Strategy, Advance Change, and Drive Results is available in paperback, ebook and audio. You can purchase on Amazon or Barnes & Noble Online. Visit www.kellybargabos.com to listen to all past episodes and/or connect with Kelly.

Leading your teams through Change is a daunting task. Tune in to discover some suggestions on how to make it a successful endeavor.

It is a powerful thing to have your team use their own words to describe how they feel about their work, what they value, and how they want to be seen and known by others. This is a great starting point for implementing change.

The book is available! Here to Lead: Mastering the Art of Leadership In Order to Execute Strategy, Advance Change, and Drive Results is available in paperback, ebook and audio. You can purchase on Amazon or Barnes & Noble Online. Visit www.kellybargabos.com to listen to all past episodes and/or connect with Kelly.

How long will it take to advance  the change I need? Well that depends. In the context of advancing change, we need to understand two things:

1) That Time is Relative
Just like boiling a pot of water...it depends on the temperature you're beginning at, the size of the pot, and how intense the flame is. 

2) We must be willing to Go The Distance
What does “Go the distance” mean? Well if you’re a boxer, it means you last the entire fight or 15 rounds. If you’re a major league baseball pitcher, it means your arm holds up for all nine innings. If you’re a NASCAR driver in the Daytona 500 it means you didn’t crash and burn, hit the wall or give up before crossing the finish line after 200 laps on a 2 ½ mile track.

As a leader advancing change, it means you do whatever it takes to stay in the game, to keep standing, to cross the finish line until your change is realized. 

In order to Advance Change you must give it time. You must understand the details relative to the particular change and then go the distance, LEADING your team with focus, motivation and DETERMINATION. After all, it’s what we here for!

The book is available! Here to Lead: Mastering the Art of Leadership In Order to Execute Strategy, Advance Change, and Drive Results is available in paperback, ebook and audio. You can purchase on Amazon or Barnes & Noble Online. Visit www.kellybargabos.com to listen to all past episodes and/or connect with Kelly.

Change is necessary. And hard. It takes Courageous Decisions to ignite change, but the small, day by day choices are the fuel that keep the fire of change burning.

Courageous Decisions are achieved with these three steps:

1) Decisions: Make the right decision to begin with. Quality decision-making is a skill that must be developed at the leadership level.

2) Choices: The choices you make on a daily basis will either compromise or protect the decision you just made.

3) Pivot: Be willing to walk away if necessary, know when to fold 'em.

There is no instant change. It is a process that happens at the decisions points. Change comes by making different decisions than you’ve made in the past in similar situations. Courageous decisions are both the big-ass, strategic, monumental decisions, that set strategy and direction and vision, and the small, minute decisions that are necessary to keep you on course throughout the journey. And in some ways it is easy to make the big, life-changing decisions. The real work, the real, lasting change occurs in the day-to-day, moment-by-moment choices that we make. At every decision point, we have an opportunity to create the change we’ve already said we want and know that we need, or to retreat back to the status quo. 

It is the decisions we make that determine whether or not we will stay comfortably at rest or on our current path, or allow the force of change to do its work. 

As leaders, our job is to ADVANCE CHANGE. It's what we're here for!

The book is available! Here to Lead: Mastering the Art of Leadership In Order to Execute Strategy, Advance Change, and Drive Results is available in paperback, ebook and audio. You can purchase on Amazon or Barnes & Noble Online. Visit www.kellybargabos.com to listen to all past episodes and/or connect with Kelly.

OPERATIONAL EXCELLENCE

What is it? Why do I need it? How do I get it?

We’ve established that change is often a reaction to internal or external forces. But it can also be purposeful and intentional and part of the culture of the organization, department or team.

 The term operational excellence by itself sounds abstract and lofty. Here’s how I define it: 

Operational Excellence is a way to create intentional change before it becomes a crisis or barrier to executing strategy, growth or business continuity. It  is a philosophy or culture where problem-solving, teamwork and leadership focus on improving the daily activities in the workplace, in order to serve the customer and meet the needs of the business, while keeping the employees positive and empowered in the process.

Operational Excellence is to an organization what weeding is to your backyard garden. It is hard work, it is not always fun, it takes discipline, commitment, the right tools, but it is necessary in order to get the results you want. If you ignore a garden for a length of time, it will become overrun with weeds.

You need it to keep your organization nimble, healthy and productive, as well as positioned for growth.

How do we get it?

Get buy in. Get the right people in the room. Get it on the calendar. Develop a list. Limit the number. Keep a parking lot. Then start weeding. And don’t forget to LEAD. 

Change can be purposeful and necessary, or a reaction to internal and external forces. Creating and committing to a culture of Operational Excellence will free up resources, improve the customer and employee experience, streamline and scale processes, which will ultimately position your organization for the future and growth and allow you to accommodate change in whatever form it comes.

Remember, we are Here to LEAD and that involves the ability to advance change. 

Tune in to find out what steps you can take to bring Operational Excellence to life on a daily basis. 

www.kellybargabos.com/podcasts.html

The book is available! Here to Lead: Mastering the Art of Leadership In Order to Execute Strategy, Advance Change, and Drive Results is available in paperback, ebook and audio. You can purchase on Amazon or Barnes & Noble Online. Visit www.kellybargabos.com to listen to all past episodes and/or connect with Kelly.

What does Change mean to you?

Change is one of those words, like leadership, that has many different definitions depending on who is discussing it and the context around it. 

For me, I’ve come to realize that Change is the intersection of discernment, discovery and determination, or for my accountant friends,
Change = Discernment + Discovery + Determination.

It is human nature to dislike change and to avoid it at all costs. Regardless of human nature, change is a necessary reality and without it, crisis will occur. Not only do our teams need bold leaders to help them through the internal and external forces of change, it is one of the reasons you were hired or placed in a leadership position. 

As leaders, we are expected to Advance Change in our organization and within our teams. 

Leading an organization through change, positive or negative, will be one of the most challenging things you do as a leader, but can also be one of the most rewarding. 

How can we make change happen? 

It would be nice if we could just have a meeting, send an email or set a date on the calendar, announce the change we need and everyone would say, “Yes, I’m in,” and change happens. Unfortunately that’s not how it works.  Change happens when we are committed to these three things:

1.     Operational Excellence

2.     Courageous and Bold Decisions

3.     Time

Tune in to find out what makes change so hard, and more importantly,  HOW we can lead our teams through it on a daily basis.

Leaders advance change.

The book is available! Here to Lead: Mastering the Art of Leadership In Order to Execute Strategy, Advance Change, and Drive Results is available in paperback, ebook and audio. You can purchase on Amazon or Barnes & Noble Online. Visit www.kellybargabos.com to listen to all past episodes and/or connect with Kelly.

The Red Light Green Light Decision Matrix and the Crossroads 2 x2 graph are practical and useful guardrails for quality decision making and will help you and your team execute strategy. 

These tools will give you the courage, the platform and the support you need when the answer is no, and they will also give you the confidence and courage you need when your answer is yes. 

The book is available! Here to Lead: Mastering the Art of Leadership In Order to Execute Strategy, Advance Change, and Drive Results is available in paperback, ebook and audio. You can purchase on Amazon or Barnes & Noble Online. Visit www.kellybargabos.com to listen to all past episodes and/or connect with Kelly.

When it comes to executing strategy, one of the challenges or road blocks we can encounter is that we spend our precious time and resources doing the wrong things. 

How does this happen to good leaders? 

1) We get distracted by good ideas
2) We are often unwilling or unable to pull the plug when a project isn't performing like we thought it would
3) We get off-track and aren't sure how to find our way back

The book is available! Here to Lead: Mastering the Art of Leadership In Order to Execute Strategy, Advance Change, and Drive Results is available in paperback, ebook and audio. You can purchase on Amazon or Barnes & Noble Online. Visit www.kellybargabos.com to listen to all past episodes and/or connect with Kelly.

The second reason we fail to execute strategy is we let the day-to-day priorities, fighting fires and too many meetings steal our time. We need to protect our time by not ignoring the reality of our day-to-day needs and the impact and load on our resources, reacting appropriately when fires do flare up and limiting the amount of time we spend in meetings.

The book is available! Here to Lead: Mastering the Art of Leadership In Order to Execute Strategy, Advance Change, and Drive Results is available in paperback, ebook and audio. You can purchase on Amazon or Barnes & Noble Online. Visit www.kellybargabos.com to listen to all past episodes and/or connect with Kelly.

Megan Ahn, President and Founder of an Executive Search firm based in San Diego, CA, gives us her insight and expertise into the Interview process with practical tools to help you nail your next interview and get the offer!

In this episode we learn that a successful interview is all about asking questions and listening in order to find out how we can apply our experience and skills to resolve the needs of the organization. They have pain and we have the skills to treat it. We also learned how to answer those tricky questions that can trip us up, and we learned that the number one goal of any interview is to get the offer. Then, and only then, do we bargain or negotiate personal terms. So much good stuff in here. 

The book is available! Here to Lead: Mastering the Art of Leadership In Order to Execute Strategy, Advance Change, and Drive Results is available in paperback, ebook and audio. You can purchase on Amazon or Barnes & Noble Online. Visit www.kellybargabos.com to listen to all past episodes and/or connect with Kelly.