I got hooked on bike racing many years ago when I watched American Greg LeMond beat Frenchman Laurent Fignon on the last stage of the Tour de France by a mere eight seconds after two weeks and 2,041 miles of racing. Later, I was a big Lance Armstrong fan. There has always been a king […]
When I was a kid, we’d sometimes go for a Sunday drive after church. I suspect my mother, a widow with two kids, just wanted some quiet time, but I remember mostly being bored. We lived in the Midwest and frankly, once you’ve seen one field of sugar beets, the others aren’t that interesting! We […]
I’ve read with some interest, amazement and amusement about “new” organizational structures in the past few years. And I believe that if everyone followed all the rules, we’d still have a feudal society. There are some interesting experiments regarding how democratic a work environment should be, but one thing I know for sure: If the […]
Insidious as termites, as hard to destroy as a nuclear-hardened bomb shelter, disguised as health food but as nasty as deep-fried butter, bureaucracy is killing you. Tolerating organizational bureaucracy is like breathing secondhand smoke for decades. You can see it, it’s annoying and it’ll eventually kill you, but it won’t kill you today, so you […]
I’m as web-based as the next guy — searching, buying, posting, texting and noodling just like most of you. I’m also pretty disciplined, so I try to do my noodling only after finishing my work. But I don’t often peruse social media looking for deep thoughts. I still shudder at the poor-quality content that self-made […]
Growing up in Minnesota, shoveling snow was a frequent activity. But my mother’s definition of shoveling the driveway wasn’t quite the same as mine. I figured if there were two tracks for tires we were good to go. She thought that visible concrete was a beautiful thing and wanted the entire drive cleared. I say […]
I’m reading “The Vitality Imperative: How connected leaders and their teams achieve more with less time, money, and stress” by Mickey Connolly, Jim Motroni and Richard McDonald. I love an analogy they put forth. “Eons ago, humans valued fire and yet could not create it. When lightning struck (literally), people captured the fire and tended […]
I’m a fan of looking for examples of great strategy and leadership in unusual places. Although I focus on for-profit business leaders, I’ve seen some great examples from other venues such as the Girl Scouts and the United States Marine Corps. A recent story on NPR caught my attention. Ogden, Utah, has the highest percentage […]
I recently wrote about the challenge of not being able to answer the question, “Who’s in charge here?” (Click here to read.) I often write my blogs after encountering something in the business world that causes me to think about a topic. It might be a client problem, something from the headlines or an issue […]
I wish that I had a dollar for every story that I have heard of lack of clarity around responsibility causing poor company performance. When I hear of a poor performing region, product, division, or business process I always start by asking, “Who owns this?” If there is no clear answer, that—in and of itself—is […]