Tag: Manage

The Musher is at the back…

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For once, I didn’t hover. I didn’t smother. I didn’t micromanage. I didn’t edit every page of the presentation deck. I didn’t pour over the agenda. I stepped away. I trusted.

Several hours before the event I tried to inject. I was told to step away. That I was being a “buzz kill.” Let it be Dave. Let it be. And so, I let it be.

Our town hall is held 2-3x per year.

The large auditorium filled slowly. Too slowly for me. (It’s always too slow for me.) My anxiety climbing. Yet, it filled.

These meetings start slowly. A sense of unease. Shifting in the seats.  It is near the end of the day and minds are turning to the commute home, to family, to dinner.

Front line team members gave business updates. Not senior management. Not middle management. Continue reading “The Musher is at the back…” →

Are you an effective manager?

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I’ve been slacking on the “Lead” part of “Lead.Learn.Live.”  I’ve been distracted with “Premium” Hot Chocolate, Grilled Cheese sandwiches and painted pumpkins inspired by Jackson Pollock.  Here’s one of two leadership primers to kick off the coming week.

The Harvard Business Review authors of Does Management Really Work? conducted research over a 10-year period involving thousands of organizations to determine whether companies adhere to three practices that are considered essential elements of good management.  Before we get to the 3 basic elements, two of the key findings of this research were:

1) Many organizations throughout the world are very badly managed…

2) Effective Management execution on the basic practices is strongly correlated with better results

Take a pause before hitting the “read more” link.  (I’ve already done it…so play along.)  What exactly are these 3 essential management practices?

Continue reading “Are you an effective manager?” →

Do you want to spend your life eking out barely better solutions to problems we’ve already solved?

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What does it take to be selected as one of the world’s most influential management thinkers?  You think and write like Umair Haque.  Someone who freezes you in your tracks.  And makes you ponder deeply.  This man operates in rarefied air.  This is the second of his posts that I’ve come across from the HBR Blog Network.  Skip my excerpts below and bang on this link to read the full post: The Next Big Thing.

…“Perhaps we’ve gotten a little too seduced by the quest for the Next Big Thing…While it’s certain there will be a next big thing…that will redraw the boundaries of productivity, efficiency, effectiveness — perhaps, the biggest thing we need to face next is us.”

“…Not “us” in the vague, internetzy sense of “the collective.” But “us” as in the even more imprecise, yet razor-sharp sense of what pulses through you and me when we feel most alive; what ripples gently through us, when we feel alone, hurt, small, afraid, taut with grief. The stuff that makes us us: not just well-behaved, obedient, productive atoms in the economic world, but feeling, thinking, doing, living beings in the human world.”

Continue reading “Do you want to spend your life eking out barely better solutions to problems we’ve already solved?” →

All we need is…

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Two rules for success…

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This short clip was shared with me by my Brother. (Thank you!)
I believe Mr. Jobs is squarely on point.

“People say you have to have a lot of passion for what you’re doing and it’s totally true.  And the reason is because it’s so hard that if you don’t, any rational person would give up.  It’s really hard.  And you have to do it over a sustained period of time.  So if you don’t love it, if you’re not having fun doing it, you don’t really love it, you’re going to give up.  And that’s what happens to most people, actually.”
– Steve Jobs, 1955-2011