Thoughts on people, teams, organizations, communities, effectiveness and success
Scott Berkun, whose work I generally like a lot, recently wrote a piece titled Why You Should Be a Team of One. It is a rare miss – a dud, and advice frankly which should be ignored.
Scott has written three books: all are quite good. His most recent, Confessions of a Public Speaker, is particularly good, helpful for someone like me who has 20+ years working with large group facilitation and design when I’m not doing my regular work of coaching execs and team.… 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
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
There are at least two parts to effective communication: a “wrapper” or form in which the information is shared, and the data or actual content of the information itself. Miss both and you bomb, and get one right but not the other and thing can get bumpy.
My colleague Dr. Jo Whitehouse of Jumpstart BioDevelopment flagged a great resource courtesy Canaan Partners for entrepreneurs seeking start-up investment or just general investment period [Disclosure: Dr.… Read the rest
This Sunday approximately 3,500 people, many of them strangers, will hop on their bicycles or take up their ride support stations and start a 545 journey that will last seven days from San Francisco to Los Angeles for AIDS LifeCycle 8 . It’s the 16th such undertaking dating back to the mid-90’s to raise money for AIDS support groups in Los Angeles and San Francisco.… Read the rest
When I ran Human Resources for the drug distribution side of McKesson , prying 15 minutes from a distribution operating shift for employee communication basics was like taking bear cubs away from their parents.
Why is this important to you? Because the lessons McKesson supervisors learned should inform the communication practices of anyone who manages people from senior execs to first line supervisors.… Read the rest