It has come to that point and you can’t escape it: you have to outsource.  Whether you were part of the decision-making process or you were just told about it, you will need to adjust to a new reality.  Even if they are just down the street, working with an outside company will change how […]

Have you ever found yourself in a “can’t win” situation at work?  You are working hard, doing your best, but yet things still seem to be going wrong.  What do you do?  Be a superhero and try to fix it yourself?  Or do you reach out and ask for help? Contrary to popular belief, asking […]

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.

If a process or a product hasn’t been going well for a while, frustration builds and some leaders try to fix it  by looking for solutions from wherever and from whomever they can.  This results in multiple parallel conversations and/or the team chasing after a dozen or more perceived solutions to the problem.  While everyone […]

Last week Bloomberg published an article about Cisco Systems that made me sad.  It describes the effects of a management process put in place shortly after I left the company.  According to the article, it has slowed down the company, led to executive resignations and damaged the predictability of quarterly results.  For those of you […]

Have you ever had one of those moments where you wished everyone on your team was more like you?  Communication would be so much easier and everyone would just get along all the time.  Or so we think.  What about creativity and innovation?  Aren’t diverse teams better for coming up with novel ideas?  I am […]