Last week, a friend and I were discussing why businesses make short-term decisions over long-term success.  I concluded the conversation with a reference to Wil Shipley‘s brilliant post on his Call Me Fishmeal blog: Success, and Farming vs. Mining.  I often mention this blog post in similar conversations, so I thought I would share it […]

After spending the last six years as a director of large central teams, I recently started a job managing a large project where I will only have a handful of direct reports. A few people asked me why I chose to “take a step back”, even though I am part of the senior leadership team […]

What would you think if your boss told you that the team was going out into the middle of nowhere for a team building event and to be sure to dress warmly?  What would you expect?  During the first three weeks of my new job, I had the privilege to participate in what turned out […]

Over a year ago, I asked my team to brainstorm some ideas on what each and every person on the team could do to be inspiring to the people around them on a daily basis.   It is important to me that my teams work to rise above the day-to-day grind and that we be the […]

It’s performance evaluation season at my company and I have been working long hours to get all of them done.  I have read a lot of articles that are strongly against performance evaluations because of the damage they can do to individual motivation and team dynamics. Having been the recipient of demotivating evaluations (even though […]

Have you ever walked away from a meeting thinking you had just witnessed a thing of beauty?  It does not happen to me very often, but I was fortunate enough to witness that twice this year.