Three ways to make your employees happier

Happy, Jumping Employees

Let’s say you took a reputable university — i.e. someplace like Harvard! — and then you went back a few decades in time and surveyed one of their graduating classes, say … 1980. Now, the results are potentially biased, because the… Continue Reading

Managers don’t seem so big on self-improvement

Managers Avoid Self-Development

Let’s start by taking a look at this graph; I got it from here: This is from Joseph Folkman, who’s a pretty big deal in the whole “leadership development” space. It’s based on 360 assessments with 50,000 leaders; they were asked… Continue Reading

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Remember: business is still individual-to-individual

Business Is All About Individuals

You know why, ultimately, business journalism and headlines like “74 percent of B2C consumers prefer this…” don’t have value? And you know why the ramp-up to “Big Data” and “data-based decision-making” will be hard for a lot of people? Here’s why: All of these… Continue Reading

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Your leadership pipeline probably sucks

Leadership Pipeline

Here’s a funny story that probably won’t be that funny to you: back in summer 2013, when I worked at McKesson on a business school internship, I got to sit in a couple of “leadership pipeline” meetings. These were meetings… Continue Reading

People who live in cities often think they live in the burbs

People Think They Live In The Suburbs But They Live In Cities

Kinda interesting, and via here: Here’s the methodology here: this guy at Trulia (their “chief economist!”) asked 2,000+ adults if they thought they lived in an urban hood, a rural hood, or a suburban hood. He then organized the results.… Continue Reading

Time to revisit the ol’ “social media doesn’t impact the bottom line” discussion

Social Media and Sales

At most organizations, people eventually spend less time — and care less about — things that aren’t directly tied to “making money” or “hitting targets.” A major example of this is employee engagement; everyone preaches it as a core issue but, because it’s hard to… Continue Reading

Three ways to make small talk more meaningful

Small Talk

Small talk is everywhere. Like, everywhere. And if often involves our first interaction with a person — either a brand-new person, or our first interaction with a friend/acquaintance when we reconnect with them. The thing is, it typically doesn’t mean anything. It’s all… Continue Reading

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The leadership parable of the roofer, the carpenter, and the inline skater

Leadership and Different Ideas

Most “leaders” at organizations: Don’t understand that organizational breakthroughs can come from anywhere Aren’t really that comfortable with ideas outside of their own This varies by organization, of course, but most managers/leaders I’ve worked with fall into those camps. If… Continue Reading