Author: J. Mike Smith

J. Mike Smith is an experienced, highly effective San Francisco-based executive and team coach. Not just “another consultant”, Mike has worked first hand in the roles he coaches, with personal experience working successfully in roles ranging from a front line supervisor to a senior vice president in a variety of companies and environments. Mike’s work coaching business teams is informed and guided by the wisdom and experience of being on teams and working through many of the same challenges and issues the teams he coaches face. As the President and Principal of Back West, Inc., the name of his consulting practice, Mike brings over 30 years of business experience. His work background spans industries including financial services, high tech, biotech, and wholesale distribution. His San Francisco based consulting coaching practice is focused in three areas – executive coaching with individuals, coaching work with teams such as team start-up and team building, and group facilitation and off-site design. More information at http://backwest.com/
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The Hiring Game: One More Secret

Turns out just when I thought I knew many of the tricks of the trade in the world of executive search consultants (also known as headhunters), one more tip crossed my radar.

While meeting this week about a very interesting corporate global role with a San Francisco firm (more on the opportunity in an upcoming post), I got to also shoot the quick breeze (time is, in this business, money if you’ve got a full slate of searches) with a couple of senior consultants about a headhunter’s life.… Read the rest

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Managing Your Career: The End of Privacy

There was a minor kerfluffle with an organization with which I’m associated; a blog stalker noticed that a post I wrote quoted somebody from the organization by name (accurately, and within context, btw) and took exception.

Like the swimmer who admires the beauty in the whites of a sharks’ teeth before realizing they are about to be eaten, there are far bigger issues for anyone to worry about than someone quoting somebody else accurately on a blog.… Read the rest

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Did Chicken Little Have It All Wrong?

As an advocate of the early warning, Chicken Little had it all wrong.

Lacking facts (the sky was not falling) and the type of receptive audience that Paul Revere had, running around warning people was a poor tact to take.

Rational thought, after all, has limits. Sometimes the best way to move something important forward is to change your normal MO (modus operandi).… Read the rest

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Your Career: 4 Questions for 2012

Retiring IBM CEO Sam Palmisano, who steered a big firm nimbly by focusing on four key questions, has a gift for you; the same type of criteria-led thinking he used to make the firm a winner apply to you.

THINK was a one-word slogan developed by IBM f...

Some find the kind of constant ho-hum success that Palmaisano had boring. We should all be so lucky. While no one individual is the behemoth that’s IBM, the lessons gained running a large firm bound by a certain sense of inertia in its trajectory (“What?… Read the rest

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Culture Club: Beware of the Backbenchers

 

Backbenchers, alas, are everywhere.

They are the people in companies and associations who are quick to point out the flaws and misdoings of others but seldom are on-point to take responsibility or blame, especially when things go south.

They are folks who are adequately competent but are more interested in taking care of themselves – as well as alerting “management” to the shortcomings of others – rather than working hard to move the organization forward.… Read the rest