"The conduct of a company's leadership team is directly correlated with the organization's long-term performance."

In her article Lessons from Team Fumbles, Susan Lucia Annunzio goes on to say "Once-venerable institutions such as Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and Royal Bank of Scotland paid the ultimate price for the behaviors of their leadership teams."

Some of the behaviors Annunzio is referring to includes:

How many SOPs does your organization have? Do you have SOPs on how to write an SOP?

What core values guide the people in your organization? Are those values real as you hire people, work together, and serve your clients? Or, are they just pretty posters on a boardroom wall?

How do you handle your training? Do you give people a list of the 791 things they can do, a list of the 427 things they can't do, and then have them sign the bottom of the page indicating they understand it all (I've heard it called "check a box training")?

On May 23, 2009, Melissa Arnot became the first American Woman to summit Mount Everest for the second time. I met her father in a workshop last week, and he was beaming with pride. Melissa's team reached the summit in adverse conditions - conditions that seem to be threatening to end the climbing season on Everest earlier than usual this year.