Are You Listening to Me?
Posted by Kelley Lear on Mar 20, 2012 in Empowerment Series, Leadership, Process Improvement | 0 comments
How many times do you find yourself in a conversation with someone and you just know they are not listening to you? You know they are looking at you with anticipation, faux interest, and simply waiting for a brief pause so they can start in on their next sentence? Or even better yet, you can’t even finish your sentence or train of thought because they have already jumped in to tell you a similar story about themselves? By the time the story gets back around to you, you probably don’t even have the energy to complete your thought. How do you feel when that happens to you? Do you want to continue to engage that person or do you feel like just walking away?
read more“Chief Innovation Officers” in 2012?
Posted by Kelley Lear on Feb 28, 2012 in Finance, Innovation, IT, Leadership, Process Improvement, Tax | 0 comments
The New Year brings with it new surveys and predictions of key economic indicators and C-Level employees who are making decisions that affect us all every day. Last year, I wrote two posts related to CFO and CIO priorities for 2011. I hope you read them and they helped you in creating your business cases, negotiating positions, projects and strategic initiatives for tax with your IT and Finance teams within your organization. Don’t forget that CIO’s may control approximately $321 billion of the spending within our organizations. I continue to feel strongly that knowing what key individuals within your organization care about, are thinking about, and what keeps them up at night, will help you to better maneuver within your corporate framework.
read moreWhat Does Your CFO Care About and Why Should you Care?
Posted by Kelley Lear on Feb 22, 2012 in Finance, Leadership, Tax, Tax Planning | 0 comments
Every year, I take an in-depth look at what the CFO’s are saying and predicting for the coming year. Last year I shared my findings with you. I thought I would do that again, as this is a pretty important thing to understand. But, why should you care? Well, in most cases the tax department must rely on approval from the CFO for tax department budgets, operational decisions, and other strategic initiatives. Therefore, I believe it is critical to better understand what they are hoping for, struggling with and trying to overcome each year. It can only help you when putting together a business case or trying to prioritize tax department projects, as you may be able to better align with overall CFO and other corporate initiatives. Big fan of doing your homework!
read moreHot Tips to Negotiation for Tax Pros!
Posted by Kelley Lear on Feb 16, 2012 in Empowerment Series, Leadership, Tax | 0 comments
A standard definition of Negotiation is “a conversation or dialogue between two or more people, attempting to reach an understanding or gain advantage of some sort, to resolve a point or competing perspectives, to produce an agreement upon courses of action, or to bargain for an individual or for your team. Negotiation is a process where each party involved in negotiating tries to gain an advantage by the end of the process”. Do any of these descriptions fit your day to day activities? Or more fittingly perhaps, do you realize that on a regular basis it is tough to get what you want? Whether it be more money for the tax department to automate or add staff, to negotiate a tax position, or to argue for greater pay, bonus or benefits? Perhaps to negotiate different tactics to reduce ETR, increase tax savings or free up cash flow?
read more5 Tips to Shorten Meeting Time!
Posted by Kelley Lear on Jan 18, 2012 in Empowerment Series, Leadership, Motivation, Process Improvement | 2 comments
For all you business professionals out there, how many times have you sat in the meeting thinking one or more of the following:
1. Who called this meeting?
2. What is this the purpose of this meeting?
3. Are we going to accomplish something in this meeting or are we here to hear Joe/Sally talk on in tangents with no apparent end?
4. Who is in charge of this craziness?
5. I want to stick a pen in my eye just so that I can have an excuse to escape this meeting!
Seven Proven Ways to Executive Failure…
Posted by Kelley Lear on Jan 10, 2012 in Empowerment Series, Leadership | 0 comments
Just read a great article on Forbes.com titled “The Seven Habits of Spectacularly Unsuccessful Executives”, written by Eric Jackson. I am always reading about the “secrets of success” and the “how to’s” on every topic in executive leadership, but not many share the definitive ways that executives can fail. I kind of like to think about the flip side. In this article, Eric also uses some research also touched on by Sydney Finkelstein and Steven Roth who published “Why Smart Executives Fail”, which included over 50 former company senior executive profiles from companies like Enron, WorldCom, Rubbermaid, and Schwinn. Interestingly enough, their research found seven habits that all these senior executives had in common, and which the authors assert are the key indicators for failure.
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