Thoughts on people, teams, organizations, communities, effectiveness and success
One of the adages in career coaching is that the best time to look for a job is before you need one.
With the signs of both Spring (at least in San Francisco) and an economic recovery in the United States appearing, a thaw in job opportunities looks like it has hit. But the jobs won’t likely be in exactly the types of roles as before, and maybe not even in the same geographies as the bumpiness of an uneven recovery hits different parts of the country.… Read the rest
Glee, the Fox TV show in its first season that just garnered a Golden Globe for best comedy television series, has something for everybody: jocks, nerds, deceivers, beauty queens, and true believers.
The regular glee, a choir activity in which people both sing and dance – like the TV show – provides a great illustration of what makes good groups click, and bad groups stumble.… Read the rest
I hope to have coffee soon with a friend I’ll call “Margie.” While it won’t be Wizard of Oz dialogue (Cowardly Lion: “What makes a king out of a slave? Courage!”), there will some similarities.
And those similarities will have a lesson for entrepreneurs who are female.
For starters, the impact and power and roles models is well understood and well researched.… Read the rest
The best adage I know for good cooking is captured in the phrase “Proof of the pudding is in the eating.”
For teams, the perfect saying might as well be “Proof of the team is in the performance.” And while we’ll hear a lot about good and bad teams over the next couple of months – from the Super Bowl, to the Winter Olympics, to the US men’s and women’s collegiate basketball tournament known as “March Madness” – the fact of the matter is that the best teams are teams that perform well when called on.… Read the rest
The challenge for most of us is to do more with less: less time, fewer resources, and do it more efficiency and effectively. Sounds like a tall order but grabbing a moment to pause, think, and then act will frequently help you do all three.
Pulling rabbits out of hats?
Nope. Just performance basics that any successful executive, or a parent with more than two kids will tell you: figuring out how to sequence work so you pick up some efficiencies or batching things to time of day to optimize how effectively you work with them.… Read the rest
Sachin Rekhi’s post PayPals Wars and its Lessons for Today’s Entrepreneurs caught my attention as I surfaced between US professional football (NFL for the locals) league play-offs this weekend. While there is much about the post that is spot-on right – strong vision coupled with short term pragmatic goals, push decision-making down as far as possible, etc. – Sachin makes the case that “It’s all about assembling an A-team.”… Read the rest