Let’s use an Olympic athlete as an example. She probably was introduced to the sport like downhill skiing at age 5, took lessons, practiced, started to shine by age 9, took advanced lessons, attended special camps, traveled to where the best teachers were for private instruction during her teenage years, spent hours every day at [...]

If change were an acronym, what would it be? C.H.A.N.G.E.:  Constant Havoc Amidst Needy Grumbling Employees or C.H.A.N.G.E.:  Challenging, Hostile, and No-Good Edicts (from management) or C.H.A.N.G.E.:  Corrosive Headaches Arriving and Not Going (away) Effectively We laugh because it is funny, and we laugh because it is true.  Even organizations and employees who claim to [...]

I’ve been studying company culture for awhile now. At its’ best it drives profitability. At it’s worst you’re replacing staff every time you turn around. Who is responsible for creating your company’s culture? If  you’re the business owner, you are!!! That means you can change it if you don’t like what you’ve got. You change [...]

What is a culture of connection and what does it do for the profitability of a company? In your industry who is eating who for lunch? (yes you’ll understand what I mean if you read through the article.) Years ago when I had my IT company we received a $1,000,000 RFP. It was a bigger [...]

Henry has a decision to make. The disgruntled customer in front of him has a valid point. There had been a mix up on the part of Henry’s service team and things had not gone smoothly. It wasn’t the end of the world but the customer had been inconvenienced once and now the ‘fix’ is [...]

Since at least the time of Plato and Socrates some 2400 years ago, mankind has been implored to “know thyself,” in life and in business. Individually, this is often taken to mean knowing your strengths so you can leverage them and knowing your areas of weakness so you can improve them or compensate for them. [...]

This week we are taking an in-depth look at the 2011 BlessingWhite study on employee engagement. In Tuesday’s post we looked at the key findings and asked questions about how they apply to your organization and you as a leader. In this post we’ll consider some of the implications derived by the authors from the [...]

This study involved 11,000 individuals from 6 industrialized parts of the globe. Each of the 11,000 participants was asked: “Assuming you have a choice, do you plan on remaining with your organization through the next 12 months?” – participants in the U.S. responded:  Yes, definitely 56%;  Probably 32%;  No Way 13%.  So only a little [...]

Neuroscience research is revealing the social nature of the high-performance workplace. This reference comes from an article by D. Rock entitled “Managing with the Brain in Mind.” So what does this have to do with Motivation? According to the researchers of this study and a number of other studies now emerging, one thing is clear: [...]

What is your state of mind as your reading this? Are you tired? Energized? Frustrated? Confident? Bored…I hope not! Our state of mind changes dozens of times throughout the day; a boring meeting, a difficult phone call, an accepted offer, a misunderstanding with a demanding client. We know that all of these things affect our [...]