Charmain Bogue

  Doing fewer things turned out to be the most strategic decision I ever made for my own work. For years, my advisory work was a buffet. Strategic planning engagements. Board facilitation. Training design. Coaching. If an organization had a problem in my general territory, I would build something for it. The variety was interesting, and saying yes to everything felt like growth. It wasn’t. It was diffusion. And the decision to focus my practice on executive coaching came from finally taking my own advice, the advice I had given dozens of organizations: you cannot be excellent at a thing you only do occasionally. The pattern I kept seeing in my own calendar When I looked honestly at my engagements, one pattern was impossible to ignore. The strategic plans, the training sessions, the facilitated retreats, all of them produced their best results when they came with sustained coaching attached. And they produced their most disappointing results when they didn’t. A strategy document wit...

Charmain Bogue on Advising Boards and Telling Them What They Already Know The value of an outside advisor isn't new information. It's permission to act on old information. Most of the time, when I walk into a boardroom as an advisor, the people sitting around the table already know what's wrong. They know their strategic plan is stale. They know their leadership pipeline has gaps. They know they have a culture problem that no amount of pizza parties is going to fix. They don't need me to tell them. They need me to say it out loud so they can finally do something about it. That's a strange arrangement if you haven't experienced it, the idea that smart, capable people would pay someone to confirm what they already suspect. But it makes sense when you understand how organizations work. Internal voices carry baggage. When the VP of operations says the strategic plan needs an overhaul, people hear a power grab. When an outside advisor says it, people hear an objectiv...

Charmain Bogue on Why Awards Are Markers, Not Destinations Every plaque on my wall represents a moment I'd already moved past by the time it arrived. I've received a number of awards over the years. Presidential Rank Award. Federal 100. Recognition from various organizations for leadership and service. I'm grateful for every one of them. But I want to be honest about something: not a single award ever changed what I did next. By the time you receive an award, the work it recognizes is already behind you. You've already moved on to the next challenge, the next problem, the next role. The plaque arrives and you find a spot on the wall and you go back to your desk. It's a nice moment. It is not a turning point. Charmain Bogue writing about awards might sound like false modesty or a humble brag. It's neither. I'm writing about this because I've watched people, especially women, treat recognition as something to chase instead of something that happens along ...