Thoughts on people, teams, organizations, communities, effectiveness and success
Many of us, unless you’re a parent tanking to let your kid beat you, like to win.
Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman in their (excellent) new book Top Dog will tell you that it this drive to win is part genetic, part upbringing, and part cultural – and that you can even successfully change how you approach competition.
Some of us desperately care about winning.… Read the rest
It’s been a bad calendar quarter for funerals (two too many) but a good 90 days for learning.
The metaphorical coin that carries what you’d like to keep on one side has something that you’d like to avoid on the other; learning from others while they’re living and learning from others after they’ve passed on seems like no exception.… Read the rest
The prospective client I met yesterday had a great set of skills, and an accomplished career.
The problem? Their type of job – and many of the ones like it – were going away as the industry contracted.
If you hang your hat on your job title, there’s not much left to hold on to when that type of job goes away, either due to technological change (think data entry specialists) or an industry consolidates and you’re trying to move to another sector where your skills are transferable..… Read the rest
It can be tough being a candidate, whether it be for a job or even one of those roles of a more public political variety.
Even if you’re seen as a slam dunk pick (think Hillary Clinton as the “inevitable choice” during the 2008 presidential campaign), things derail. The same is true of job candidates.
A client recently was being wooed by a firm until he thought they’d gone frosty on him; his hunch was that they’d decided he was really a “generalist” in background when they’d figured out they really wanted a “specialist.… Read the rest
Going home can sometimes be “interesting,” even when it’s somebody else’s home you’re visiting.
That legacy visit was my treat as I caught an annual dose of Tigard High School boys basketball as the Tigers visited the Forest Grove Vikings last week. While I don’t think history books show Vikings making it to the Pacific Northwest (nor tigers either, but a least the alliterative play off the founding forefather Wilson Tigard in 1852 makes sense), it’s a fun moniker in the land of 9 months of gray, cold and rain.… 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