Square Peg News – Square Peg Solutions

The Team Leader

By Don Tai | February 22, 2022

Dr. Ashley Prisant Lesko, SHRM-CP has a multi-faceted background – from working in the military as a Naval Officer to leadership roles in Fortune 100 companies, to educating students at colleges and universities. As a Surface Warfare Officer, she led hundreds of sailors and employees on ships around the world.

After receiving her MBA at MIT, she filled various senior leadership roles at Amazon, working in operations, HR and finance with over $45M in P&L, training programs, budgeting, and strategy across 4 fulfillment centers.

Her book, Go Beyond the Job Description, sheds light on ways for leaders and individuals who want to do more of what they enjoy doing in their current job. She now leads Square Peg Solutions, focused in operations strategy implementation for high growth companies & optimizing leaders’ impact on organizations. She teaches leadership, business and HR classes for Harvard Extension.

Name one thing most people don’t know about you.
I have a passion for travel – I have been to over 45 countries, all 50 states, and all 7 continents. I believe the more you travel, the more you learn about yourself and those around you.
What is your greatest leadership trait?
The ability to see the opportunity in others. Everyone has a potential – but it’s up to the individual to act on that potential. I help people recognize and act on that potential – and love seeing what they become when they cross those milestones! This is one of the inspirations of Leadership 9 Box – it helps leaders fill in the gaps of their skills (believe me, we all have them!)
What is your favorite leadership motto or quote?
“Sometimes it’s the very people who no one imagines anything of who do the things no one can imagine” – Christopher Morcom – Going beyond what anyone ever expects is the hallmark of an inspirational leader
What are your strengths in Strength Finders?
My top 5 strengths are: Learner, Achiever, Woo (winning others over), Positivity and Individualization … these strengths have helped inspire me in starting SPS.
What is your favorite food?
If I could only have 1 ice cream for the rest of my life (and I really love ice cream!) it would be Rocky Road … doesn’t matter if it’s in a cup or cone!

Leadership Expert Releases Book: Choose Your Comeback Plan

By Don Tai | June 24, 2020

Leadership Expert Releases Choose Your Comeback Plan, a Timely New Book to Help Business Leaders Recover from Crisis

Jenn Strang Marketing & Communications

Charlotte, NC—Leadership and business strategy implementation expert, Ashley Prisant, Ph.D. releases her timely new book, Choose Your Comeback Plan, aimed at helping managers and small business owners return from crisis with a winning comeback strategy. With its unique approach to problem solving, Choose Your Comeback Plan is part business adventure and part resource guide.

“2020 could be the year that makes or breaks business leaders. They’ve been handed one challenge after the next and some just aren’t able to clearly see a way through,” says Ashley Prisant, Ph.D., principal at Square Peg Solutions, a consulting firm focused on leadership, business optimization, and helping teams pivot with limited resources and comeback challenges. “Indecisiveness is not a viable solution. I created Choose Your Comeback Plan to help leaders deal with the immediate crisis and harness momentum to push their business forward.

In the first half of the book, readers face a series of critical decisions that will take them further into the story as they choose their own path and create their own outcomes. Readers can opt to select the route they would typically take or try a different perspective – without real-life risk. Each story reveals a different outcome and allows readers to choose the ending that works best for them.

The second half of the book is filled with content to help the reader devise their own winning comeback plan using a step-by-step approach that applies a 5-piece pivot plan. This hands-on guide with specific strategies, tactics and questions helps leaders determine how to steer their organization and emerge an even better, stronger team than they were before the crisis.

Ashley Prisant, Ph.D. possesses a multi-faceted background that makes her uniquely qualified as a leadership and strategy implementation expert – from her career as a Naval Officer to her leadership positions at Amazon during its the rapid-fire growth in the early 2000s. Today, she teaches leadership, business and human resources courses for Harvard Extension School and leads Square Peg Solutions, a consulting firm focused on leadership and optimization. Her expertise lies in helping teams deliver results in a short time with limited resources, rapidly increasing productivity, and coaching leaders to maximize engagement while improving their bottom line. Choose Your Own Comeback Plan is Dr. Prisant’s second book, following Go Beyond the Job Description.

Choose Your Comeback Plan (ISBN: 9781735157504) is available on Kindle and in paperback via Amazon. For more information about the author and the book, visit the author’s website.

source

Choose Your Comeback Plan – Book by Ashley Prisant

By Don Tai | June 2, 2020

Choose your Comeback Plan: Surefire methods to help reinvent your team or organization after a crisis, Book by Ashley Prisant, June 2 2020, Amazon

Turn the crisis you are facing now into your team’s comeback plan.

Choose Your Comeback Plan offers managers and small business owners a unique approach to understanding and recovering from crisis.

Utilizing a step-by-step approach that applies a 5-piece pivot plan, leaders challenge themselves and their teams to transform their immediate crisis and harness momentum to push their business forward. By choosing their own path, readers can bring their team and organization back on track – faster than competitors.

Choose Your Comeback Plan is a business adventure book – readers will follow their own story and choose their own path. Readers can follow the path they would typically take given the situation at hand or try something new to develop a different perspective – without risking anything. Each story reveals a different outcome and allows readers to choose the ending that works best for them.

The second half of the book is filled with content to help the reader determine how to devise their own winning comeback plan. A hands-on guide with specific strategies, tactics and questions helps leaders determine how to pivot their organization and become an even better, stronger team than they were before the crisis.

Leader’s dilemmas: How to turn Rock Stars into Super Stars…or let them go

By Ashley | February 1, 2019

by Ashley Prisant Lesko, Business Executive

Leader’s dilemmas: How to turn Rock Stars into Super Stars – or “promote” them to customer

Summary: It takes a STRONG leader to fix a Rock Star on their team, however those leaders that do find their teams are stronger – and their employees respect the level of accountability the leader has proven to hold every person on the team.

It’s now 2019, the last year in this decade. We’ve seen some tumultuous times, and leaders of all kinds have been challenged in many ways.

What is a leader? A leader is simply one that aims to influence another person’s behavior or actions. You don’t have to have a title to be a leader. Anyone that chooses can become one

I have worked in several companies, and all of them had their share of Rock Stars and Super Stars. As a leader, you want to get away from the Rock Stars as quickly as possible and hope that you can have several Super Stars in your midst.

Super Stars are the ultimate team players. They lead from the sidelines, from the center and anywhere they are needed. Their primary goal is to do what’s best for the company, but they won’t lose what personally motivates them (such as outside of work) to do it. If taken care of, Super Stars are the most loyal employees; they know their job as well the job of several others. They have significant knowledge on their organization, their work to the point that makes their organization more successful by doing their job or feel the pain if they do not. However, even though most Super Stars know how important they are to their organization – they never use it against the company.

Rock Stars, on the other hand, can be team leaders, but many times chose the easier (and more self-serving) path of taking care of #1 – themselves. Like Super Stars, they have significant knowledge on their organization. They know their knowledge is vital – and use it to their advantage as much as possible. This could be in the form of attitude, work load (choosing to work less), or demands (pay raise, position, perks) beyond normal expectations.

The challenge for companies with Rock Stars is that typically, Rock Stars are made, not born. The company has allowed these individuals to grown in the organization as a single point of failure – someone who is more important to the organization – than the organization is to the Rock Star. The organization needs the individual – more than the individual needs the organization. This could even appear to the point of blackmail (“if you don’t give into my demands (as a Rock Star), then I will leave the company, and you will lose XYZ information”) if not kept in check.

How do you prevent growing Rock Stars?

1- Take a look at your team for Single Points of Failure. Is there anyone on your team that is the only person that has knowledge of an area?

2- If so, build a plan for a backup, develop a playbook, create a training plan, set up a bench of individuals that can grow in the job

3- If you find that the Rock Star recognizes their position may be threatened (“knowledge is power! If I have all the knowledge, then I have power”), explain your plan going forward to have backups – to help them and everyone else. Encourage them to become Super Stars – becoming team players in the process. If the Rock Star continues to challenge you – you may be forced to hold them accountable – either they train others, or they have to leave your organization

Some may challenge the advice in #3 – and rightly so. If you get rid of the Rock Star, don’t you lose the knowledge? Digging a bit deeper, you’ll find that most Rock Stars are seen by their peers as a poison pill that gets away with things that others don’t – and unjustly so. By keeping a Rock Star, and allowing him/her to continue – you put your organization at risk with their singular knowledge and your team as a breakdown in teamwork can occur.

I find many leaders struggle the most with the last paragraph – and I have found myself in that category. It does take a strong leader to upgrade a Rock Star into a Super Star on their team, but it can be done.

Leaders that go beyond and hold their Rock Stars (and teams) accountable find their teams are stronger.

It’s 2019. This is the year YOU can make it happen.

Originally published on LinkedIn

Go Beyond the Job Description, Book By Ashley Prisant Lesko

By Don Tai | July 3, 2018

Go Beyond the Job Description, Ashley Prisant Lesko. new book published July 03 2018

What do you do well that you don’t use at work? In Choose your Comeback Plan: Surefire methods to help reinvent your team or organization after a crisis © 2020 available on Amazon

Operations Strategy & Implementation

Leadership Optimization

Category: Square Peg News