Thoughts on people, teams, organizations, communities, effectiveness and success
The headline in the Wall Street Journal earlier this month blared “Employees with ‘High Potential’ Need to Know.”
There’s just one problem. If you want to screw up talent, tell them they’ve got high potential – shorthand for they’ve been tapped and they’re great.
Why?
Research (Carol Dweck) shows that labeling folks doesn’t work to improve performance. In fact, labeling folks (“great,” “high-potential,” etc.… Read the rest
Sometimes the job you’ve been promised won’t be there; sometimes the job you think you’ve lost may return.
So how do you know if it’s a sure thing?
You won’t.
Learn why the “sure thing” today is likely the maybe thing tomorrow, and what you can do to make yourself better prepared when that sure-thing-to-make-or-nothing happens.
Why is the sure thing is not exactly the sure thing?… Read the rest
This might seem like a story about Steve Jobs. It’s not; it’s a story about you.
Turns out that we get the hand we’re dealt in life. Events happen; it’s what you do with them that counts.
The Twitter tweet was was factual save the for last line. “Steve jobs was given up at birth; he was fired from the company he founded.… Read the rest
Steve Jobs changed millions of lives. I know; he changed mine too.
From time to time people come along who greatly inform you, either by their immediate presence or the impact of their work.
Jobs did both; from the “insanely great” products he strove (and drove others crazy) to build to the example he set as a maverick (“pirate” might be his preferred youthful self-description).… Read the rest
Being a CEO of a public company used the be the ultimate role for anyone in business. So when did it become so undesirable – and just a stepping stone to a better things down the road?
Jobs and roles in companies go through cycles. ABC’s Pan Am shows us that being an airline stewardess was the hot job to land for working women in the 1960’s (boy, does that concept seem dated) and NBC’s The Office vilifies most roles, unless you’re the boss, in organizations today for the unpleasantness you have to tolerate to survive.… 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