People, Projects, and Organizations
Consistency Is The Difference
It’s not uncommon for leaders of organizations to think that their organization’s performance is subpar when compared to similar organizations in other companies. They feel that others must be much more sophisticated and produce far better results. While these feelings may be true the reality is far from it. As with most things in life...
The Power of the Question
It’s precious to watch a young child learn. They ask questions that reveal their naivety and inquisitiveness. Question after question, their minds churn taking in information and formulating new questions. There is a lot of power in the questions children ask, and because of this they are rewarded with information for growth. As adults, ower...
How Work Gets Done
Most organizational leaders are compensated for executing on strategy and maintaining daily operations. While true, this is an overly glorified way of presenting their job description. Stated bluntly, leaders are responsible for accomplishing, producing, innovating, and providing value. You know, doing good things and getting work done. Their bonuses and annual pay increases are dependent...
Haunting Deadlines
Working on projects can be very demanding, taxing our energy and resiliency. There are often spurts of overtime that have to be put in to get a project back on track. Sometimes you have to work months upon months of long hours just to stay a little behind. If you worked on just one project...
When Does Done Mean Done?
How many times have you asked someone to do something for you and when they tell you they’ve done it you come to find out it’s really not done? It can happen when driving home after having your car repaired, opening the bag on a takeout order, or having your kids clean their room. The...
Reality Testing
My dog, Wyatt, eats rocks. He devours rocks, gets sick and can’t keep food or water down. He then wallows around for several days until he passes the rocks-not a pretty image, I admit. You’d think Wyatt would have learned after the second or third time, but he hasn’t. My wife Dawn and I are...
Drama Belongs in TV Shows, Not Organizations
The popularity of TV shows that have lots of drama is ever present. People get hooked on the characters and their overly dramatic behavior. The drama is woven into story lines adding many surprises and cliff hangers to the plot of the show, bringing people back week after week. While drama is good for TV...
Match Your Medium With Your Message
We’ve all experienced this: You address a personal issue with a colleague or you share some critical information with a project sponsor and it blows up in your face. You had no idea it could have gone that way but it did, and now your relationship with that person is fractured. If you’re like most...
Natural Consequences
All of us have heard some time in our life “if you don’t do _____ (fill in the blank) there will be consequences.” Sometimes we did what we were supposed to do and avoided the consequence. Other times, we didn’t fare so well. Consequences are life’s little learning agents. But did you know there are...
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