A brief look at 3 ways to communicate a rejected business improvement idea, the positive, negative and creative ways.

You have heard it all before every time business goes through a rough patch. “It’s time our leaders got creative.” Actually, it’s time we all got creative. “Creative people just drive you crazy.” “They have no social skills–well limited ones.” However, you know creative people so you have to watch getting them angry. “They could …

Even more creativity is going to be needed if we are to continue thriving in the business market. According to IBM’s Institute for Business Value, a survey of 1500 CEOs revealed that “creativity is the single most important attribute to lead a large corporation.” Training our creative corporate staff how to lead and our leaders …

I wrote recently about the role of field knowledge in project management or the difference between senior and junior project managers in terms of decision-making. More specifically, I argued that while senior managers focused on potential project difficulties, junior managers were more easily swayed by their project’s plan and its deficiencies. Spotting problems with your …

What Would a Caveman DO? : Training Insights How We Know What We Know About Training What exactly is caveman training? Actually, I just made it up to get your attention. You probably know it as non-traditional training. Bringing in outsiders, people in related fields to train in the areas where we are similar. Traditional …

The former inevitably leads to the latter One of the most common causes of crises (business and personal!) is making poor choices, a problem that can usually be corrected by training and communication. Sometimes, though, underlying conditions make standard addiction and crisis management nearly impossible. One issue that often surfaces in the world of big …

I became fascinated by change in 1997 when I led an organization-wide change initiative to purposefully redesign our Product Development and Commercialization Process (PDCP). After 18-months of organizationally created VUCA we declared victory – a success that only 30% of change initiatives achieve. Let me put this in perspective. If only 30% of your product …

Got an email, not long ago, asking: “Is there any danger with placing a major donor on the Board of a nonprofit organization?” I responded that: Ideally, a non-profit organization will have a list of criteria for prospective Board Members and a formal procedure for (identifying and) recruiting new Board Members — meaning that no …

My post this week is based on ideas explored in my forthcoming book, Staying Grounded in Shifting Sand. I have a chapter on the ‘Power and Meaning of Money’ because I believe if you don’t fully understand the role that money plays in your life, you won’t be able to align fully your values and …

If you are interested in the theories of business strategy covered in the blog post below, you may want to read Henry Mintzberg’s excellent book, Strategy Safari: A Guided Tour through the Wilds of Strategic Management. For example, Mintzberg and his co-authors provide a more lucent (and compact!) description of Michael Porter’s Five Forces Model …