Blog #231 Last week, I went for an early morning bike ride in the freezing temperature and blustery winds. I did not think much about it as I prepared for the nine-mile ride to my office. Most of the ice had melted and I felt confident I could handle whatever came up. I had researched […]
Change: Why You Shouldn’t Fear It
Blog #230 Usually, I am called in when organizations have hit a plateau and are feeling a bit stuck. Often, these are successful businesses that want to continue the upward trajectory. They just are not sure how to keep the momentum going. This almost always means they are stuck…and a change is going to have […]
The Importance of Plotting Time Horizons
Blog #229 I have been pondering a recent session I conducted with a leadership team of an organization that had just been purchased by a larger, synergistic competitor. In other words, it was young, big, growing company that was backed by a lot of money, yet they had not been faced with many large business […]
Why Conflict Avoidance Hurts Productivity
Blog #228 I believe that conflict avoidance is the number one killer of productivity and profitability in small and mid-sized businesses. In fact, I think one of the main reasons that people keep me around for facilitation is because I am willing to “Go there”. I can’t tell you the number of times that I […]
Be Unreasonable (Does That Mean Me, Too?)
Blog #227 I love saying things like, “Extraordinary often lives in the unreasonable, so be unreasonable,” “Good enough sucks,” or, to use my favorite Henry Ford quote, “Whether you believe you can or believe you can’t, you’re right.” I push the teams I work with to be unreasonable, to be great, and to believe they […]
Embracing the Power of the Do-Over
Blog #226 Recently, Reka and I completed our annual strategic planning trip that we do as a couple. We have done this for 20 years in one form or another, yet we have really embraced it over the last three years. I can confidently say there is not anything else that we do together that […]