Thoughts on people, teams, organizations, communities, effectiveness and success
People want to be successful, which is usually a combination of being effective (doing the right thing) and efficient (doing things well), putting folks down a path to achieving favorable results.
Sometimes – as counterintuitive as it seems – that means doing less, not more.
Optimal performance (think weight training, writing a dissertation, running a business) is a combination of intense work and intermittent breaks.… Read the rest
Start-ups are a lot like some relationships; great when when you first meet and date, perhaps a little bumpy and not-so-hot as you spend more time, grow, and start wanting different things from the relationship.
The fact of the matter is that the road is littered with co-founders or co-founding teams that needed to split apart – some stay, some leave – in order for the start-up to grow.… Read the rest
Dental root canals, IRS tax audits, and what for many is the annual formal performance appraisal are all equally inviting.
There are some simple, straight forward steps you can take to make the performance appraisal process more appealing and effective, and this post will walk you through those ways and perhaps even have it be easier (if there is such a thing), more productive, and attractive.… Read the rest
There was a 1960’s coming of age movie about four Midwestern guys titled “Where the Boys Are.” Funny and clever for its time, it was also laden with stereotypical models of life – including the roles of women and men – of that era.
If you squint (“Really hard,” some of my colleagues would suggest) there is a different plot playing out in the corporate world in the United States today.… Read the rest
Yankee baseball Hall of Famer Yogi Berra (king of malapropisms but no relation to Abe Lincoln on the right) once said “You’ve got to be very careful if you don’t know where you’re going, because you might not get there.”
The same is true of most of the organizational stuff that you do that touches people in companies; figure out where you want to end up, and work backwards.… Read the rest
Gawker was promoted buzz this past month with speculation that an exec from a leading San Francisco Bay area company was gay. It’s helpful to remember that this is the publication that uses headlines such as “Anderson Cooper is a Giant Homosexual and Everyone Knows It” or “Which Pregnant Actress Has a Famous Cheating Husband.” It may be published, but it’s clearly Rupert Murdoch-style journalism.… Read the rest