Thoughts on people, teams, organizations, communities, effectiveness and success
Yankee baseball Hall of Famer Yogi Berra (king of malapropisms but no relation to Abe Lincoln on the right) once said “You’ve got to be very careful if you don’t know where you’re going, because you might not get there.”
The same is true of most of the organizational stuff that you do that touches people in companies; figure out where you want to end up, and work backwards.… Read the rest
Gawker was promoted buzz this past month with speculation that an exec from a leading San Francisco Bay area company was gay. It’s helpful to remember that this is the publication that uses headlines such as “Anderson Cooper is a Giant Homosexual and Everyone Knows It” or “Which Pregnant Actress Has a Famous Cheating Husband.” It may be published, but it’s clearly Rupert Murdoch-style journalism.… Read the rest
North Americans (OK, maybe just those of us who are Yankees) love simple solutions, especially to complex problems.
We want a pill to cure obesity (instead of a change in diet, lifestyle, better sleep, and appropriate physical activity) and student testing to cure educational ills (in lieu of better teacher training and development, better resourcing, smaller class size, and greater parental involvement).… Read the rest
David Brailer does not have a background that causes you automatically to pick him as most likely to succeed.
And that’s why his success story is interesting for me as an executive coach, and why it holds at least two insights helpful for you.
Brailer grew up in the coal mining town of Kingwood, West Virginia; his father was a coal miner and later a maintenance supervisor, and his mother a surgical nurse.… Read the rest
Talent Wars: The “A” PlayerHoax details an HR practice called “tograding.” The approach has some good advice (depthful, behaviorally focused interviews with well trained interviews) mixed with an often simplistic, and unproven application techniques.
Check out this tograding promotional blurb:
CEOs report that “picking the right people” is one of their most serious challenges.… Read the rest
Duke University men’s basketball coach Mike Krzyewski (pronounced /ʃəˈʃɛvski/shə-SHEV-ski) once noted after his Blue Devils got beat, “We lost, and that’s the main thing that went wrong.”
Hopefully you take have a little more introspection than the storied (and highly successful) Coach K. The fact of the matter is that losses – bumps in your smooth career road – are the types of things that likely boost your career downstream if two things happen: 1) the bumps mostly occur earlier in your career rather than later, and 2) you have the smarts to learn from them.… Read the rest