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I saw reports today that three national retail chains are shutting down or severely cutting back.
That puts me into a more reflective mood. I realize that there are indeed times where it’s appropriate to given in to the painful reality.
This has happened especially in the context of volunteer organizations. Sometimes there just isn’t enough heart and momentum to continue – like we saw many times during the pandemic.
Read the rest of this entry »Hire them for their attitude, then train them for their skills.
This is a truism that I find very powerful, and explains many of the employees who worked out well or … didn’t so much. The fact is that we’re acquiring new skills all the time, and the need for certain job skills is constantly changing.
In the end peoples’ attitude is what means they’ll thrive in your organization or not. But there’s more subtlety to this than I first expected.
Read the rest of this entry »It can be tough to undergo a change of leadership. Especially if you’re the outgoing leader.
Sure, there are potentially many effects on people in the organization, but that’s not what I’m focused on today. I’d like to talk about YOUR experience.
The best case is that the change is known in advance, even if not all the details are clear. Soon there will be a specific date, perhaps a certain event at which the announcement will be made. Ideally you see this as a positive thing, the passing of leadership duties from one person to the next.
Read the rest of this entry »We’ve all been there, the greatest embarrassments of our careers.
The hard part is being really honest with yourself, as you probably saw the failure coming and just hoped that you’d be able to find your away around it.
Jim Collins articulated this idea well in Good to Great:
Read the rest of this entry »“More businesses die from indigestion than starvation”
— David Packard
Our culture makes it tempting to want to always grow a business. More customers, more products, more services, more geographical area, more employees … it never ends. Until it does.
This can be true of non-profits as well, just with different words.
Read the rest of this entry »It seems like a lot of my thoughts this month are gravitating towards flexibility and resilience! This week I’d like to explore what it means for a whole organization to withstand the buffets of change.
Even thrive.
Last week I talked about core principles of perspective, readiness, energy, learning, and trust. Well, it turns out that groups of people exercise these characteristics as well.
Read the rest of this entry »Last week I talked about three views of resilience. But that opens up the very uncomfortable question of whether “normal” even exists.
It’s easy to get depressed about all the chaos and uncertainty which seems to surround us. I feel that way myself sometimes.
But then I realize that it’s just requiring me to develop a new set of skills. And even though I’ve never been a surfer, I like to think of it as “surfing through the changes.” I like the image because, to me, waves seem very unpredictable and abounding in chaos.
Read the rest of this entry »There are a couple of ways to think about resilience.
The one we usually want to fall into is “rebounding back to normal.” After all, “normal” is the comfort zone and usually is our happy place.
The other way is to define resilience as “adapting to a new normal.” In this case, we have to admit that the world moves on, and the old normal may never exist again. Or parts of it might need to change.
Read the rest of this entry »That quote is attributed to Peter Drucker, the amazing leader who helped redefine business in Japan and then around the world.
It’s good to remind ourselves that plans and strategies are fine – even necessary. But the real foundation of getting anything done is the culture of the organization.
This brings to mind a year in an organization I worked for about twenty years ago. The company was getting into serious financial trouble, and it was noted that growth in the number of employees was getting out of hand while the economy was headed the wrong direction.
Read the rest of this entry »There are just some questions that just might be too scary to put out there.
This can be especially true if you’re a worker with relatively little power. When something looks just a little bit “off”, are you willing to ask to find out more?
Instead, we might deflect with “I guess that’s just the way it’s done” or “It’s above my pay grade.” Now, I get that – why risk a harsh response to a question that you may not be able to do much about anyway?
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The Values-Based Business 