All Is Nominal
People who fire rockets like to say, “Conditions are nominal,” when everything is good to go. Guess what? Conditions are nominal. All the courage you …
Leading
Tips and Insights about influencing people toward shared goals.
Leadership Is Not (Really) About Getting Stuff Done
Getting angry, pushing, directing, pleading, blaming, or doing the tasks ourselves are sure signs that we have fallen into into the trap of thinking that …
Cause Their Performance To Soar
Communicating our belief in others’ ability to accomplish something–even if it’s difficult, even if they’ve never done it before–is an essential leadership talent. Such a vote of …
How to Lead When Things Go Wrong
When things go wrong (and when they keep going wrong), our temptation is to judge the people involved as underperforming nogoodniks. (We occasionally will use …
Expect Big Picture End Results
Yes, expect more. But what we expect matters. If we expect specifics–especially what a specific person or situation could or should give us–we will have …
Bad, Good, and Great Leaders
Bad leaders try to keep things as they always have been. They mostly push and struggle. Good leaders try to enlist others to create the …
Zooming Things Faster
Wherever we see a lack of speed at work, we will find a lack of trust in self, in others, and between others. Instead of pushing …
Orders of Magnitude Impact
If we want to make a big impact, let’s get good at making a small impact then set a goal for one order of magnitude …
Call Forth
Don’t worry so much about the qualities people lack. One great (as in grand, epic) tool we leaders have is to practice seeing a desired …
Some People Just Can’t Be Told
Try as we might, some people won’t do what we need them to do. It’s not that they are bad or stupid. It’s that they …