Organizations and their leaders rarely take a linear path to excellence. Instead, the journey typically will have any number of curves, choke points, and dangerous intersections. As a leader, you must be adaptive to be successful, cutting new paths in order to bring the company back on course and aligned with the organization’s true mission … Read more
Some thoughts on growing great teams and the leadership ideals that can inspire them: One person who embodies the leadership qualities of growing high performing teams that contribute to developing a Level 5 culture is General (retired) Colin Powell. I had the privilege to serve on his personal staff when he was the Chairman of … Read more
In my ongoing multiple series of blogs, I’ve described the importance of developing leaders in your organization, with the goal of reaching Level 5 leadership. However, there’s an important distinction between Level 5 leadership and a Level 5 culture. Just because you have a corps of strong individual leaders, it does not mean that they are … Read more
The development of strong mutual accountability is one of the most significant stages of the cultural development of an organization. Dave Logan, John King, and Halee Fischer-Wright describe the stages of accountability and explain how we, as people, are essentially tribal in their book, Tribal Leadership. The authors developed the book as the result of … Read more
I didn’t always understand what a great culture looked like. In fact, as a young West Point cadet and later as an Army officer, I only had a vague notion of what a culture was at all. We had a set way of doing things, to be sure, but it was pretty much taken for … Read more
By now, you’ve seen the term Level 5 used a lot around here. It’s even in our name! You might be wondering what we mean by Level 5. Here’s some explanation. Over the course of four decades, I’ve been exposed to each of the five levels of culture described below. For brevity’s sake, I’ve given … Read more
