Innovating Is Learning

Managers say they want change, improvement, creativity, and innovation. They are full of it. What they really want is mistake-free and pain-free improvement. Outside of work, people do the same thing. They say they want to get in shape or find a new job, and then one little setback stops them in their tracks. They feel embarrassed and angry and quit. The trick is to weather the storm and learn so you’re less likely to screw up again. Setbacks are supposed to be the very things that help you avoid future mistakes…. Read More»

Choosing Respect Over Popularity

The desire to be liked derails many people. It happens a lot to adolescents and teenagers. Kids want to be accepted. They want to be popular. It’s almost always true that they wish to maintain or improve their social standing. You never see a popular kid roll up to school in the morning, pause, and think deeply about how to become unpopular.

It doesn’t happen. The popular kids want to stay popular. The unpopular kids wish they were popular. That leads to many bad decisions for young people…. Read More»

A Different Take On Workplace Morale

There is a lot of talk about how to improve morale. Morale is simply a group’s s sense of positive belief in their work and the organization. Assuming there are solid work performance standards in place, more is better. Sadly, we too often think the answer is to simply give people stuff. We give them plaques, certificates, and other trinkets by the truckload. After we figured out that rewarding others was important a few decades back, we quickly began to over do it – and the trend persists today…. Read More»

Respect Civility, Revere Candor

High performance, success, and achievement require exemplary communication skills. Unfortunately, the world has fallen in love with a mode of communication that more often than not facilitates mediocrity. Meet civility: being cordial, nice, congenial, kind. BUT, the type of communication that is required for excellence in organizational life and beyond is in fact often shunned. Meet candor: straight-talk, being a little curt, blunt, to the point. Candor is about saying what needs to be said. It’s about keeping it real. Here’s the million-dollar question: Which one is more important? … Read More»

BOLD: Reinventing Hiring

Hiring is a process that creates too much risk.  It needs a bold makeover.  As practiced by most companies, hiring is illogical.  We are encouraged to evaluate a candidate’s fitness for duty with no real data.  Why is it considered normal to make a hasty decision about a long-term commitment?  That’s not merely illogical, it’s […] Read more… Read More»

10 Leadership and Career Myths Debunked

  It’s amazes me to see how many fundamentally loony ideas are still considered normal at work.  These erroneous ideas often lead to bad decision-making, but it doesn’t have to be that way!  Open your mind, read these ten, and you’ll start viewing work quite differently.  In no particular order. Myth #1:  A great functional […] Read more… Read More»

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