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. […]
I remember reading in a book one time about coaching football. There was a (probably apocryphal) story about a team playing. Game is tied, 60 seconds left, they have the ball on their own 20, and the starting quarterback gets injured for a few plays. The coach puts in a backup who has barely played. […]
I was at the veterinarian’s office the other day and I noticed a chart on the wall. It was a “Cat Pain Scale Rubric”, where you look at things like their eyes, ears, whiskers, tail, and shoulders, and based upon an eye chart assign a point score, then add the whole score up to determine […]
Wow, that was longer than I realized. When it comes to forming habits, they say (whoever “they” are) that it takes about a month of consistency to form a habit. If true, then the corollary is that it probably only takes about a month of NOT doing something to lose the habit (in reality it […]
Balancing Freedom of Motion With Guardrails Reviewing my last two blog posts, I realize I still have more to say on this topic. I am greatly challenged by this idea of guardrails and business rules. Generally speaking, I am a fan of The HP Way of management, where the idea is that you empower people […]
Here’s an interesting leadership thought exercise. Let’s say your team is walking along lengthy paths, and there are a bunch of boulders in the way along the path. Which of these is your initial reaction? a) Run ahead on the paths and remove all the boulders or b) Make sure each team member has a […]
After posting last week’s blog post, I realized I have more I want to say about effort versus results. Or more accurately, about process versus results. I heard a saying one time, it went along the lines of: “A sub-par team will produce sub-par results no matter what process is used. Conversely, a good team […]
After the last two blog posts, I have yet a third moving story. After the house was all packed and everything moved out, came the fun part…cleaning the entire house top to bottom. One particular task I performed was cleaning all the baseboards. So I did one or two rooms, using spray cleaner and rags, […]
The chore I hate the most in my house is definitely laundry. It’s just never-ending, especially now that I have a couple of kids. It’s better now but it took some mental improvements to myself to get there. Mainly because I had to change my psychological approach. I used to see laundry as a TODO […]
I used to have a personality quirk, and I still do to some degree, where I have to know exactly what all is going on around me to a great level of detail. In my house I could tell you exactly what is in every closet, drawer, or shelf in the entire house. Even movies […]
Knuggets of Knowledge 