Thoughts on people, teams, organizations, communities, effectiveness and success
After a few months of patient networking as I’d coached him had not produced the new job my client sought, frantic had begun to set in. He could see that his current job was one or two more bad quarters away from a likely company shut down.
While he might have some time, he didn’t know how much time before he had no job.… Read the rest
The request came from a client whose leadership team I had worked with this June; the team had a consultant come in earlier and diagnosed them as dysfunctional. What to do about that dysfunction? That wasn’t part of the program.
The work the team had done with me followed the Road Trip model, and predictably some things had popped up in terms of prime improvement opportunity areas.… Read the rest
It’s great when good people do well.
It’s even better when good people, talented people navigate a career bump or two and end up in a better role with a better boss and culture than they left behind.
Someone I’ll call “Amy” is one of those people.
I know her through community work we’d done together, and my coffee with her this week was to catch up on her new job, and to debrief on how she got there.… Read the rest
Who knew that hiring realities and a trip to my home state of Oregon would intersect.
But they did.
You know the deal. You’ve got a candidate or two from inside the firm to consider and candidates from outside that are in the vetting / interview hopper for the job.
You end up – surprise surprise – hiring the outsider. Only later do you come across the statistic from the Center for Creative Leadership that approximately 66% of senior execs hired from the outside fail within 18 months and that the overall failure rate for external hires within 3 years is 40%.… Read the rest
Only the hopeful and the perhaps the ignorant confuse voluntary associations with work groups.
Yet the fact of the matter is that there are elements from the world of voluntary relationships that can help more than just a few work groups perform better and even have a little more fun.
These opportunities for shared lessons came to mind with the fifth version last month of what’s become an annual pilgrimage up to San Francisco Recreation & Park’s Camp Mather near the Hetch Hetchy and Yosemite Valleys in the California Sierras.… Read the rest
IBM founder and CEO Thomas Watson had a sign in his office – and more signs plastered throughout the firm.
Aretha Franklin sang about it in the movies.
Buddha noted “What we think we become.”
So why don’t we think more?
The thought came to mind as I trekked back from a week-long stay at San Francisco’s Camp Mather, a place in the high Sierras near Yosemite.… Read the rest