I just returned from a quarterly management meeting being hosted by a client. It’s a two-day meeting being held offsite for 30 mid- to senior-level managers of a business unit. During the meeting, Pete, head of a 1200-person business unit, unveiled his brand-new blog. I really admire Pete. He’s been taking risks and encouraging his staff…
Are Your Employees Going the Extra Mile?
Leaders, when’s the last time you saw your employees go the extra mile? Today? Last week? Last month? The photo at right was taken by Terry P., the Library Media Supervisor at my kids’ elementary school. (Back in the day, we called them “librarians”.) Shortly before this picture was taken, Terry had been doing an…
Making Decisions, 100 Years at a Time
I’ve been watching reruns of the Ken Burns series The National Parks on PBS. It’s an in-depth look at the birth and evolution of our country’s national park system. Called “America’s best idea” by writer and historian Wallace Stegner, men both famous ( Theodore Roosevelt, John Muir )and lesser-known (Stephen Mather , Charles Young) were…
5 Lessons Learned from a Failed Project
Last week, I wrote about a powerful leadership lesson learned when my key project crashed and burned. People Equation reader Nancy asked about the lessons learned from that experience. Indeed, there were several. But first, the story of “The Institute”, the project that gave me both fits and gifts. . . Years ago, I joined…
Avoiding Verbal Spam
Sometimes a tweet just sums it up perfectly. Ben Eubanks tweeted: “Verbal Spam”. Creates quite the mental picture, doesn’t it? How often are you subjected to verbal “spam” in the workplace? Probably more often than you’d like. My first reaction to Ben’s tweet was to imagine people who blather on, saying nothing of value. …