The keys to understanding and implementing a unique competitive advantage are to define your organizational goals and expectations and to know your people and support their growth. Integrating these two ideas is a powerful, effective method for increasing efficiency, improving performance beyond your expectations, and as a result retaining your best people.

In his book, The Manager’s Book of Questions: 1,001 Great Interview Questions for Hiring the Right Person, John Kador identifies seven types of questions that serve specific purposes in a job interview:

When CEOs model the way for effective talent management you see successful system implementations and results. This includes defining clear expectations, setting individual development goals, conducting performance reviews on time, coaching and mentoring individuals, and holding managers accountable to fulfilling the same performance.

Reviewing publicly traded companies, the study’s findings also revealed that companies are redefining the CEO role—separating it from the Chairman of the Board and often moving the former CEO into the Chair position. One advantage to such an arrangement is the deep knowledge the Chair can offer the current CEO.

When people fear recession, they reduce spending. They decrease growth-related budgets in their business, and they sell their homes for fear of not having enough.

The “new economy” is changing the way we think about business and its evolving relationships. Kouze and Posner state that the abilities of today’s leaders to stay on top of these factors are increasingly challenged by:

4 reasons why it’s lonely at the top. A variety of unique factors contribute to a CEOs’ isolation from employees, organizations, and their own emotional needs and desires:

Bringing in HR specialists enables you to focus on your core business while ensuring that a keen eye is on talent and human resource management. There are a number of benefits to an outsourcing arrangement:

In his November 2009 article “The use and abuse of scenarios,” Charles Roxburgh discusses the ways that scenario planning helps leaders to identify extreme events and their potential outcomes and responses. He notes four features that lead to understanding uncertainty and developing strategy:

The most cut-and-dry identifier of someone in the Millennial generation is that they were born between 1978 and 2002. Attitudinal and behavioral tendencies generally observed in this generation include:

True change takes a lot of effort by a lot of people. If you don’t have buy-in and support from at least 25% of your workforce then road is going to be even more perilous.

To achieve a true mindset of innovation takes commitment. Kuczmarski submits that eight building blocks that rest on three interconnected platforms: