Thoughts on people, teams, organizations, communities, effectiveness and success
“Did you lose your voice?”
It was the first question my exec coaching client asked himself as the chairman went around the room polling everyone’s thoughts.
“Worse,” my client said, “I knew it was a really bad idea and everyone else knew it too.”
Research by social scientists documents the dangers of groupthink; an opinion gets started, a couple of people agree, and pretty soon you have a tidal wave of sentiment pushing in one direction.… Read the rest
Jack Hawley, one of the smartest OD people I’ve ever known, once shared the Native American saying that “to travel fast 
you have to travel light.”
It applies to people (whether it’s actual luggage or their own personal baggage) but it also applies to startups and any other organizations.
The fact is that it’s hard to be nimble when you’re big, or small with lots of extra stuff that you’re carrying around.… Read the rest
It was a nice compliment – as a finished a full day of facilitating and flipcharting – from a participant at an offsite I facilitated in Hong Kong.
“You have,” she said, “an amazing ability to distill what somebody said to a few words and capture it perfectly.”
“Thanks” I offered; “I’ve had lots of practice.… Read the rest
If you live in a certain City by the bay, sooner or later little surprises you.
Annoy you? Yes. Delight you? Often. Alarm, disappoint, thrill, and endear? Always.
It’s those differences that make the place so special. Take away those difference and ultimately it leads to one destination; the land of boring, common, even mediocre.
Some workplaces are just like that City.… Read the rest
We all love comebacks.
Those of us who are San Franciscans really love it when it involves our much beloved US professional football team, the San Francisco 49ers.
The 49ers are in the championship hunt this year after a long hiatus, playing for their first conference championship – a step before the Super Bowl and league championship – since 1998 against the New York Giants this upcoming Sunday.… Read the rest
Sports are an imperfect analogue.
But like Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, analogues and metaphors provide representations that if properly understood can give us insight to the real world – not simply shadows on the cave wall.
So what does this have to do with the most American (as in the United States and Canada – not the rest of the countries in the Americas) of sports, baseball?… Read the rest