If we’re going to build profitable succession plans, creating advancement opportunities that are a bit outside the traditional approach of promoting (read: pushing) our best team members into supervisory or management roles primarily based on their technical expertise and work ethic will play a sign...

As the foundation was being laid for what I believe is still the greatest nation on Earth, Thomas Jefferson penned these words:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Lif...

If you ever had the pleasure of watching Bo Jackson play football or baseball, or you remember anything TV ads from the late 80s or early 90s, I’m guessing my “Joe Knows” phrase immediately reminded you of Nike’s Bo Jackson campaign. And just in case it’s not ringing a bell, let’s take a short walk ...

Since we now have a solid understanding of how a poor promotion can kill profitability, let’s dig into what we need to look for when considering existing team members for a leadership role we need to fill in our organizations. I’ve seen firsthand just how valuable an internal promotion process can b...

While some great team members have no interest whatsoever in climbing the company ladder, far more will jump at the chance whether it’s the right move for them or not! In some cases, their technical expertise and tenure give them an edge over every other candidate being considered. Don’t misundersta...

One of the first people I remember meeting on an assembly line, when I finally made it to the shop floor after nine full days of orientation, was a fellow named Phil. He was the day shift lead on that line and had been for long enough to have earned a reputation that even a hard headed and strong wi...

An article from Forbes.com called Promoting Wrong People Hurts Employee Retention and Productivity opens by stating “Managers are key to employee retention and productivity. But many companies don’t promote into management the people who would do the best job as managers.” 

A separate article from ...

If we want to have any hope of capturing the profit that’s so often killed in the recruiting process and build a strong recruiting pipeline, we’ll definitely need intentional involvement from leadership at all levels of our organizations in order to cast of clear vision of where great candidates can...

Even when we’re extremely proactive in our leadership roles about being engaged with our teams, there’s more we can do to develop a strong recruiting pipeline! Being directly involved in the recruiting process certainly helps, as does having a consistent presence with on our teams, but I’ve never be...

At the risk of beating a dead horse, I’m gonna stress this one more time… There’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all approach to promoting within an organization. And therefore, offering our team members with career development opportunities (that are indeed appealing to them) and building a busin...

As we look at ways to be intentional about providing growth opportunities for the folks on our teams so they experience true career development, we have even more reason to include them as we create our long range succession plans! One thing is for sure though; it’s no longer as simple as giving our...

If we really want to be sure we’re providing our team members with career advancement opportunities, in an actual pursuit of happiness, rather than making them feel like no good deed goes unpunished by promoting them into a role that they have no interest in, we’d better be intention about knowing w...