People are born with a burning fire; a desire to explore and learn. Exploration leads to discovery. Discovery is exciting. Excitement is motivating. Before we know it, we see things differently. We can do new things. We have new confidence. It makes us want to step up and try to discover more. Until someone we respect tells us we can’t (in words or in actions).…
I was in a meeting a couple weeks ago with a man wearing glasses. He caught my attention because his glasses were smudged. I mean REALLY smudged. Distractingly smudged. How was he able to see anything? To be honest, I desperately wanted to ask him for his glasses so I could clean them. I imagined him lighting up when he put them back on, “Oh…
Accomplishing great things in business requires great teamwork. Steve Jobs put it this way, “Great things in business are never done by one person, but rather by a team of people.” Achieving great teamwork depends on our ability to manage the team’s energy. For that, we need a compelling goal, a conducive environment, & effective systems. 1) A Compelling Goal A good goal is clear…
Setting the stage for great teamwork in the workplace is a lot like creating a new team sport, like soccer nuevo. In team sports, how the game is won is crystal clear. There’s a time limit—urgency. There’s an arena and a well-defined playing field. There are rules. There’s a way to keep score in real-time. There’s a referee and a coach. These things frame up…
Launching a small business is exhilarating… at first. But for most, the honeymoon is short-lived, replaced with long days of firefighting and diving catches. These people aspire to create a business, but what most create and take on is multiple jobs: owner, executive, marketer, sales person, operations manager, bookkeeper, and expert maker/doer. It’s no wonder so many small business owners are exhausted! To create more…
Shared stories unite business leaders, employees, and customers. The most powerful stories convey what people care most about, draw us in, and make us care too. They can even make us feel like family. Every business has stories. Stories with the potential to improve quality, efficiency, and effectiveness—to inspire greatness. When broadly shared, these stories make customers, employees, and leaders proud. They make us part…
Internal forces command our attention. External forces govern success. Internal forces are loud. External forces are silent. When external forces are ignored, we use speculation, assumption, or the highest paid opinion to make decisions. Internal forces put everyone, at every level of an organization, at risk of drowning in a sea of busy-ness. External forces that govern our effectiveness are things like: Customer preferences Competitive…
Success is associated with hard work. In the industrial era hard work meant putting in long, grueling hours and working to the point of physical exhaustion. Today, work is more complex and mentally taxing. Hard work means something different. It now includes self-awareness, mental clarity, and good judgement—thinking straight. It’s tough to get good results when we’re not thinking straight. But thinking straight is easier…
Clinging to the known is easy and comfortable, but it’s not satisfying. In fact it’s boring. Growth and gain come from doing the things we don’t really have to do. They come from stretching ourselves—by embracing discomfort. But we don’t need to cannonball into new challenges, just dipping a toe in will do. As our toe gets comfortable, we need to put the rest of…
A team that rows (or works) as one is a symphony of motion. A harmonizing of spirits. It’s magical. And it's FAST! Assembling such a Dream Team is challenging work. The coach repeatedly assigns each rower (worker) to different positions in the boat, rooting out their strengths. Rowers are moved, swapped, and replaced until a magic combination is found. There’s an old story about a…
Employees are a business owner’s largest expense, and a massive source of wasted time and money in most companies. The ability to attract and retain great people separates thriving businesses from struggling ones. Engaged people amplify business effectiveness, but according to research, most people are not engaged. That’s a tragedy, especially when we consider that everyone enjoys engaging work. When engaged, we’re at our best.…
Which would you choose to attend, a blockbuster TED Talk or a blockbuster movie? Do you read more non-fiction or fiction? How do you feel about documentaries? Do you listen to anything other than music in the car? We all seek out a mix of pleasure and purpose in our daily lives. However, the mix that’s right for each of us varies. Paul Dolan and…
I was walking the beach with a friend when we came upon a sandcastle under siege. The ocean was sending wave after wave to destroy the defenseless fortress. Each wave surging ever-closer. The sandcastle would soon be erased from the face of the Earth. Its only crime was daring to stand in defiance of the mighty ocean. Something had to be done. I immediately dropped…
On the day I turned 16, I was all gussied up and the first person out the door—determined to land my dream job. I chose the place because everyone working there always looked like they were having fun. When I arrived, I sheepishly asked the girl behind the counter if they were hiring. She said, “I think so, fill this out” and slid a blank…
Our core values are tied to our sense of identity. The more something aligns with our values, the more we’ll fight for it. Our values are behind the objectives we set and the actions we take. Shared values make up the bedrock of loyalty, for both customers and employees. We’re all hard wired to seek out other people “like us.” We all want to feel…
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” Victor E. Frankl When we interact with anything, it changes. It's like adding cream to coffee. The cream swirls about as it makes its way through the coffee. It takes some time to settle in. In our own…
The journey to achieving high quality starts when a person decides they are someone who does things well and in a lasting way. Martin Luther King Jr. said it best when he said, “If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so…
“Toxic people adhere as concrete blocks to your ankles, then push you to swim in poisoned waters.” John Mark Green Do you work with someone who leaves a trail of depleted people in their wake? Do the majority of their interactions leave people feeling badly? If so, they are poisoning the work environment. Draining everyone’s time and energy, like a vampire. They are a boat…