One of the realities of being a leader in 2021 and beyond is that direct reports and others that work with you on projects and processes don’t wake up every morning thinking to themselves that today is the day I am going to make myself more accountable.

In a recent virtual Fundamentals of Business Leadership simulation workshop there is a scenario where two of the central characters, David and Ellen are having a conflict over David’s lack of communications on a critical project and his unwillingness to take accountability for his mistakes and delays. Ellen is frustrated that the work David was supposed to have done wasn’t done (she’s the one who must tell the customer) and David is upset that he thinks Ellen is being too hard on him and that he thinks the client is being unreasonable by demanding the project be delivered on time.

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This time of year brings out all the pundits and so-called experts who espouse their insights and ideas in the form of blogs, articles, podcasts, and other assorted media, predicting the future and providing business leaders with prophesies to base their decision-making on during the coming year. Among the many things you will read and hear about are the painfully obvious including the continued emergence of artificial intelligence, the endless expansion of ecommerce, and of course the ever-present geopolitical issues that lead the news headlines every day, yet seem to have very little impact on the health of the global economy in 2017.

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Last week, I started a six part series of blog posts called Practical Leadership Insights about Leading during a Transition. This series is focused on presenting real-world ideas and tools to leaders operating in the VUCA world of the “new normal.” It has provided tips and thoughts on how to understand and execute business strategy through people when a business ecosystem is in transition.  I discussed how I believe this is different than Change Management because Change Management is an evolving process that teaches leaders to build resilience to forces outside of the organization, whereas transition is a finite event that is controllable and usually initiated as a logical business decision. 

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Supercool, SuperSaas, and Going to Jail

The interconnected business ecosystem worlds of venture capital, cloud computing, software as a service (Saas), and Human Capital Management (HCM) were shocked last week when Zenefits – one of the hottest and fastest growing companies on the planet – made an unprecedented business announcements that caused the rocket ship to crash back to earth.

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