Autonomy: I hear a lot of discussion these days about keeping employees engaged in the workplace. Let me explain what employee engagement has to do with “two levels up.” We know, from the research by Daniel Pink and others, that knowledge workers require three things to be fully engaged at work: Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose. Before we can give control …
Mission First: But people always. Here’s my takeaway from the mantra: “Mission first, people ALWAYS.” It is true that we are always dealing with people. Ourselves, our leadership team, our employees, our customers and our vendors — all are people. At least for now! I’ve long said that we need to put our employees first. I know from experience that …
In The Beginning I have the privilege of working with a couple of business incubators and several start-up company founders. The founders are sometimes surprised when I suggest that they must pay attention to leadership now, not later. They are even more surprised and usually totally unprepared to talk about their fundamental organizing principles. It “all” starts with fundamental organizing principles (FOPs). …
Vision: It’s the vision thing. You know, that BHAG (Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal). That Yonder Star. Trying to put that feeling, emotion and passion into a short meaningful statement is like grasping at smoke. You can’t ever quite catch it. Yet it is critical to do so to make sure your organization knows why it exists. I believe that it …
Gino Wickman has written a very clear, practical and implementable how to book for getting a grip on your business. He introduces his EOS or Entrepreneurial Operating System to us early on then methodically goes through the meaning and implementation of the system. There are six major components to his EOS: VISION Successful business owners not only have compelling visions …
The subtitle of this book is “The art of turning tough times into triumph,” and could not be timelier. Calling the 2008 and 2009 “tough times” could be the understatement of the decade. In the preface, McFarland states as a universal truth that, “It’s often during life’s most difficult times that we discover our most critical hidden strengths and that …
Often I’ve contemplated the old saying that a picture is worth a thousand words. In my experience, that statement is true and I’ve also observed that the viewers frequently derive significantly different information from a picture. Some will see simply a scene or in abstract art they will be reminded of vastly different experiences than I might recall. What we …