Thoughts on people, teams, organizations, communities, effectiveness and success
“Did you lose your voice?”
It was the first question my exec coaching client asked himself as the chairman went around the room polling everyone’s thoughts.
“Worse,” my client said, “I knew it was a really bad idea and everyone else knew it too.”
Research by social scientists documents the dangers of groupthink; an opinion gets started, a couple of people agree, and pretty soon you have a tidal wave of sentiment pushing in one direction.… Read the rest
Three posts worth your reading / watching time:
Dan Pink’s new book To Sell is Human has terrific great research on getting your ideas across. Here’s a link to a short video of his 6 Successors to the Elevator Pitch.
Former McKinsey consultant Andrew Sobel’s sweet spot is client relationships. Here’s a recent post titled 6 Essential Roles You Should Play with Clients that frames the key roles you should be thinking about if you work with clients.… Read the rest
A guy I met at a client firm’s baseball outing had a singular statement:
“Silicon Valley software engineers rule the world!“
Do they?
His take was based on some simple facts: the world is run on software, the best of the best software engineers are in Silicon Valley, firms can never find enough good engineers to do work that is indispensable, the jobs pay well to do fun stuff so Silicon Valley engineers must rule the world.… Read the rest
2014 is calling. Yes, you.
The words it uses – “bonus,” “performance review,” “promotion” – may be different but the results are the same.
Time to up your game and/or up the game of your team.
Time to get started. If you haven’t been “campaigning” now is the time to start.
And every day counts.
It’s also time to realize that your boss – and anyone else who informs things that benefit you like pay, bonuses, and promotions – are prone to a series of cognitive biases.… Read the rest
I could tell you that 23 years ago when I moved to San Francisco I figured out that my neighborhood in the Mission would be the hippest place to live west of Williamsburg in Brooklyn, if not North America.
I could say I predicted that the Chronicle’s C.W. Nevius would write “The vibe may be more Mission than Marina today” when talking about trendy neighborhoods in the City.… Read the rest
Jack Hawley, one of the smartest OD people I’ve ever known, once shared the Native American saying that “to travel fast 
you have to travel light.”
It applies to people (whether it’s actual luggage or their own personal baggage) but it also applies to startups and any other organizations.
The fact is that it’s hard to be nimble when you’re big, or small with lots of extra stuff that you’re carrying around.… Read the rest