Can You Afford an All-Star Who is not a Team Player?
This is always a tough situation, especially for a new leader. You inherit a group who has a high-level contributor, but unfortunately, they’re not a team player. They’ve been instrumental in getting high-end work completed, but sometimes they can leave a trail of...
How Do You Build Strong Relationships at Work?
I’m an advocate of building solid working relationships with your colleagues – those who report to you, those within your department and cross functionally where that makes sense. We don’t have to become best friends, but it’s important to understand the context of...
Sometimes Struggle is Just What We Need
In life, we all do our best to avoid adversity. In fact, we go out of our way to try to plan everything out and control each and every situation—trying to avoid landing in a pothole. However, some of life’s best lessons are learned through the crucible of struggle. Our bodies, our minds, our lives, are all filled with battle scars—it’s what make us . . . us. It’s amazing when we look in the rear-view mirror of life to see the events and situations that impacted and shaped us.
The Rice and the Walnuts . . . getting the right things done each day.
Have you ever heard this analogy aimed at helping you prioritize your daily activities. My wife heard of this and taught it to our two sons and to me as well. The walnuts represent the important priorities in life, like maintaining your physical health, your...
Isn’t Improvement Just Part of Their Job?
Why are we going to all this fuss to get people to embrace Continuous Improvement—shouldn't it just be part of their job, something they do all the time? That's what someone said to me. They felt that we didn't need special tactics, training, or a role for someone to...
Why is Good Leadership So Elusive?
Isn’t this a great question? It’s one we don’t really talk about too much. But I’d bet we all could agree on this statement—good leadership is hard to find. And when you work for someone with really great leadership skills, it’s amazing how fun and fulfilling work can...
Hurry Up!
How many times have you heard this term in your life . . . hurry up! When we were kids, we probably heard a million times from our parents. “Hurry up or you’ll be late.” As adults, we hear it at work, “You better hurry up or you’ll be late for the meeting.” Heck, I’m...