Yes, but…
I’ve been on the road with a lot of good on-site work in the past few weeks, and a pattern emerged in multiple organizations. A major issue for companies, a growth restraint, are employees I’ll label as “yes, but …” I’ve heard a lot of “yes, but …” recently. Yes, but to get someone […]
Something to think about
Productivity is for robots. – Kevin Kelly
Doing Things Differently
I hear a lot of frustration caused by two people doing the same task differently. Something like: I start with the big picture, he starts with the details. I start later, she starts sooner. And so on… It is often coming from a vantage point of “I do it right, they do it wrong” because […]
The 3 Day Weekend
This weekend, a three-day holiday in the U.S., is also the unofficial kickoff of summer. We’re looking forward to longer daylight hours and vacations. And everyone I’ve spoken with recently has talked about how busy they are, how they really needed this holiday weekend to catch their breath. I’m certainly in a similar mindset. A […]
Development
“These people have careers, not jobs.” After yet another act of extraordinary service, a traveling companion commented on the extremely high level of customer service provided by our hotel. Not just what was done, but also how. The staff was genuinely pleased to be of service. Their work was viewed in a bigger picture context, […]
In the Weeds
Try as I might, I often find myself “in the weeds” in the weeks preceding my vacations. This month was no exception. I’ve packed 6 weeks worth of activities into 4 in order to allow for 2 weeks of relatively unscheduled time. Everything important + urgent gets done (at least so far) but it’s an […]
The Carton of Milk
A great story from a recent workshop … In describing the interaction between teams, a team director likened it to getting a call from his wife while checking out at the grocery store. She asked him to pick up an extra item, a carton of milk, something that she left off of the shopping list. […]
Law of Increasing Returns
When I hired my terrific new website designer, I told (warned) her that I would go onto the site and edit too. And I did. I changed some language, I moved a few things around. Most of these were improvement plus It took a lot less time to do it myself than to explain it to […]
Three-Quarters of Our Time
I read an interesting statistic this week: three-quarters of our time is spent communicating. It’s not surprising when I think about it, just eye-opening. Three-quarters! There are hundreds of models for effective communication and yet we still have difficulty. So I’ve been thinking about what lies under effective communications. Every communication has two active roles […]
Featured in the LACC Business Journal
No Dumbing Down and Other Strategies that CEOs Use to Guide Growth
What Gets Done
It’s not about what you do, it’s about what gets done. Leverage your time for highest and best use.
And the Answer is …
In an interesting conversation with a client last week, he cried, “We have bureaucracy!” Ok, maybe not cried so much as moaned. Loudly. This is a start-up company with a few hundred employees. What had happened? Someone did something without regard for the actual impact of his or her action. They did it by the […]
Don’t Do Less
Many of you just completed your first week back at work after a spring break. A week full of too much to do and catching up – leading to moments of “is it really worth taking time off when I feel buried under an avalanche on my return?” Spending day after day of trying to […]
Culture Ate Strategy
Peter Drucker predicted it and it actually happened: culture ate strategy for lunch. At the SXSW premier of the Compaq documentary film Silicon Cowboys, I was reunited with other members of the senior leadership team that created the business phenomenon that was Compaq. In some ways it was like a class reunion – I hadn’t […]
Why to invest in Later
There is a budget conundrum, investing in now or investing in later. There is never a shortage of activity to be funded now, there are always urgent activities hungry for dollars and attention. Give yourself time to consider what will be most important tomorrow, next year, 3 years out. Ensure that you are funding tomorrow […]
New Muscles
I took my new muscles for a spin this morning, and here’s what I learned about business.I’ve been spinning for a few years and really enjoy it. It’s a great cardio workout, and it creates time for me to “not think.” But a few months ago I stopped spinning and started circuit training. I realized […]
Aha! Moment: Collective Courage
During a retreat, a senior team debriefed their recent activities and then looked at their upcoming goals. One team member suggested that by overestimating the effort it took to achieve a goal, they had unconsciously backed off what was possible (even probable) and actually set the bar too low so that they could be sure […]
The Fog of Now
We’re all familiar with the phrase “fog of war,” where the current situation crowds out the bigger picture (often of what is right and wrong). In growth companies, we often experience the “fog of now.” The busyness of now – the 10,000 urgent things that must be done now – that busyness obscures the bigger […]
Mid-Point
The last six weeks have been a whirlwind – it ‘s mid February already! Now is the time to ask yourself where you are against your plans for the first quarter. The midway point on anything is a terrific time to check-in against your intentions. Half way through, enough time has passed for planning to […]
Three to Use in Hiring
There are three competencies that are the baseline for me when interviewing: Intellectual curiosity + action/results orientation + respect for others I want to see these three in every job, Hire for these, then reward the behaviors,
The Good Fight
The Good Fight Birds are taken with pipes that imitate their own voices, and men with those sayings that are most agreeable to their own opinions. Samuel Butler How often do you listen to voices that are disagreeable? On the 30th anniversary of the Challenger disaster, brought about in part by groupthink, make sure that […]
Best Advice #1
Some of the best advice that I’ve ever received. Simple but incredibly useful. “Ask for what you want, notice what you get.” Think about it.
That Guy
I’m sitting in an office with the CTO of a Fortune 500 firm. The phone rings. He glances at the caller ID and says, “that guy, he only calls with problems. I don’t want to answer it.” Who could blame him for not answering, really? Who wants another problem another complication in their busy day? […]
Don’t Follow The Script
There are few things more annoying than being subjected to The Script. You know, the wait staff that can’t be stopped from reciting all the specials, even though you aren’t interested. The NYTimes customer care person who asks a litany of a dozen check list questions when all I really want is my paper – […]
(NOT SO) USEFUL PATTERNS
Many relationships (work and home) make it to the long term by developing patterns around conflict. Then the parties proactively self-censure, reinforcing the pattern, and leading to premature compromise or avoidance of even possible conflict. This is a good method of reducing conflict, but is it a good method of leading and producing organization growth? […]