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How to be strategic about responding to work e-mails

Responding to work e-mails

E-mail, at least to me, is a total boondoggle. Responding to work e-mails is an even bigger boondoggle. Let’s start with a couple of basics: There are no established ‘norms’ on how to handle e-mail E-mail represents work, but it’s often not actually… Continue Reading

Future of Work: Judger questions vs. learner questions

Learner questions vs. judger questions

What’s a judger question? What’s a learner question? Let me give this to Fast Company to explain: Learner questions facilitate progress by expanding options, while judger questions impede progress by limiting perspectives. The idea of judger questions and learner questions are massively… Continue Reading

A hidden key to 2016 strategy planning

Strategy Planning

Hopefully you’ve already done some 2016 strategy planning for whatever size business you work at or run — because, you know, we’re halfway through Month II of the year at this point — but even if you have, you can… Continue Reading

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Please stop listing your core values. You’re missing the point.

Core Values List

There are a lot of tremendously fraught things about the idea of “company culture” or “mission statements” or “visioning” or whatnot. By my count, the No. 1 most-fraught thing is that often (read: almost all the time), the ‘values’ of… Continue Reading

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Growth and innovation come from the customer

Growth and innovation come from the customer

Here’s an interview with a marketing professor (Tim Calkins) at Kellogg/Northwestern where he’s discussing innovation and products and revenue growth and all that good stuff. Here’s a money quote: It’s not enough just to look for opportunities and innovations and new… Continue Reading

The definitive time equation to remember at work

Work and time management

This is primarily going to be anecdotal — i.e. based on people I’ve worked with, my friends have worked with, etc. If you want some science on people having problems balancing and understanding time (especially at work), you can read this or… Continue Reading

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The most common interview questions do little to advance the hiring process

Job Interview Questions

I just came across this post on HubSpot about ‘The 10 Most Common Interview Questions — And How To Answer Them,’ which is in turn based on March 2015 research from Glassdoor into ‘The 50 Most Common Interview Questions.’ The order of… Continue Reading

Managers judge new ideas poorly. So what do we do?

Moving along good ideas

Take these two concepts and think about them: Harry Potter, maybe the most successful film + book franchise of the last 20-50 years, comes from JK Rowling experiencing ‘loads’ of rejections before she got a publisher. The main way we set… Continue Reading