I was in a meeting yesterday and realized partway through that the outcome was going my way. The decision was landing where I wanted it to land. At the same time, I noticed several people in the room whose mental models I disagreed with. Their reasoning bothered me. Their framing was off. Part of me […]
After I published my last post about Power Tools (er, I mean AI), a reader asked me a fair question. “OK, so what do you do with your expensive workers who are being paid more than the current market will bear?” It’s a good question, and I think the answer is actually the flip side […]
I used to think this was just a cranky saying from impatient people who couldn’t delegate. Now, after three decades in the industry, I realize it’s uncomfortably true. But not for the reasons I originally thought. Here’s the pattern. A team is struggling. They reach out for help. I come in, assess the situation, and […]
Do you ever hear the saying “the days are long but the years are short”? I think that might be 2025 for me in a nutshell. There are multiple strategic efforts and issues I’ve been working on all year. It feels like they’re just dragging along and taking forever, and I look around and wonder […]
I wanted to follow up on my last blog post. Now I am aware that someone can read that post and just tear it to shreds. The assumption is that the electrician is working towards an experience-based and intuition-driven understanding of the outcome. But technology marches forward, and we have to question whether the electrician […]
I love analogies. Here’s another one! Let’s say you have a house, an older house: 30, 40, maybe even 50 years old. And it’s having electrical problems; lights flicker, outlets don’t all seem grounded, switches don’t all work. If you brought in a highly experienced and skilled electrician, that person could probably, within about 45 […]
I remember a valuable lesson I learned from a mentor a few years ago. I was speaking to this person and probably complaining about how our organization had so many processes and policies that it felt like we couldn’t do anything, everything we wanted to do we were told “no”. He said something really valuable. […]
One important personal concept that you have to learn to handle, especially as you get more senior, is how to handle what are seemingly contradictions. Let me explain via example. As you get more and more senior, you need to stop worrying about the days, in terms of what specific things did you accomplish today. […]
Imagine your goal is to gather apples. Your immediate instinct might be to wander through a forest, spotting ripe fruit on the ground and collecting them. For a small family or a spontaneous snack, this works perfectly. There are apples readily available, and the effort is minimal. This “foraging” approach is akin to how many […]
I started a training class one time with this statement. Sometimes I still do. It’s intentionally facetious, a tongue-in-cheek admission that aims to set the stage not for certainty, but for critical thought. Because the simple truth is, for almost every topic, every rule, every best practice, there will always be exceptions and edge cases. […]
Knuggets of Knowledge 