Author: Eric Douglas Blog

Eric Douglas is the senior partner and founder of Leading Resources Inc., a consulting firm that focuses on developing high-performing organizations. For more than 20 years, Eric has successfully helped a wide array of government agencies, nonprofit organizations, and corporations achieve breakthroughs in performance. His new book The Leadership Equation helps leaders achieve strategic clarity, manage change effectively, and build a leadership culture.

Five Frames of Systems Thinking in Business

When you use systems thinking in business, you discover patterns of assumptions that may have been invisible. We refer to these as “frames.” In the field of cognitive science, it’s well understood that frames influence how people think about a particular issue or problem. In the world of politics, there’s a conservative frame (“We need …

Three Challenges to Maintaining a Systems Perspective

Watching leaders and managers in action, I’ve observed that there are three major challenges to maintaining a systems perspective. First, because we live in an era of accelerating change, it’s easy to become distracted by the daily influx of events and issues – “to spend 24 hours a day fighting fires,” as the vice president …

Business Process Management: 3 Keys to Success

Organizations are constantly faced with the need to rethink, redesign, restructure, or reduce costs to remain competitive. However, many organizations find it challenging to tackle business process improvement. It is often a domino effect; changing business practices in one area may affect numerous other processes across the organization. Add in all of the stakeholders who …

Process Improvement Plan in Eight Steps

This tool describes an eight step process improvement plan. Each step is defined, along with hints for ensuring quality of execution in each phase. This is an invaluable tool for leaders who want to improve a business process and assure themselves of success from planning through implementation. Hint: This tool is best used in conjunction …

Creating a Balanced Performance Scorecard

I work with a lot of Boards of Directors for public agencies, corporations, nonprofits. Typically, my focus is on helping these Board develop a high-level performance scorecard that the Board can rely on for measuring the organization’s performance. This, in turn, will accelerate the organization to attain higher levels of performance. The important thing about …

Behavior-Based Interview

One tool you can use to ensure you find the right people is “behavior-based interviewing.” It starts with writing down the behaviors that are most important for success in a particular job – not the tasks. Managing a team, motivating people, developing under-performers, starting a line of business, engaging people in change – these all …

Five Keys to Organizational Strategy

This tool lists five keys to organizational strategy based on research into what successful leaders do. Leaders can use this as a checklist to make sure they have considered all the crucial questions in building and managing their business. The Five Keys 1. The business domain is clearly defined – in terms of the customer’s …

10 Keys to Organizational Success

This checklist details the ten keys to organizational success. It is based on research conducted during the past 20 years on companies that became the leaders in their industries. This list serves as a checklist for business leaders and executives. This tool also includes a list of six things that unsuccessful companies do. 1. Create …

The Evolution of Non-Profit Boards

Non-profit Boards of Directors typically follow an evolutionary path as the organization matures. This tool lays out three stages of Board evolution and identifies the characteristic behaviors of each stage. This tool can apply to public agencies, city councils, non-profits, and co-ops. Board members can use this tool to help clarify their role and adapt …

10 Responsibilities of a Non-Profit Board of Directors

This tool spells out ten important responsibilities of a Non-Profit Board of Directors. Board members – and staff – can use this tool to make sure their boards stay on track. Keep in mind that the Board governs the organization – not individual Board members. Board members need to work together to fulfill these responsibilities. …

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