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Category Archives: Personal Success
Relearning
Much has been written about the importance of learning throughout our careers and how we can Learn Better. As we progress in our careers, it is equally important to relearn. That is, to review previously learned material to revise and … Continue reading
Career Advice (For All Ages)
It is graduation season again. Having just come from my 35th reunion for business school, I feel inspired to offer some advice to recent graduates and some reminders to all of us (old and young) in the working world. “When … Continue reading
Posted in Leadership, Personal Success, Team / People
Tagged Career Advice, Humility, Learning, Simplicity
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Avoid Problems
There are two ways to look at avoiding problems. The first way, as the cartoon points out, is to ignore the problem, sweeping the problem under the rug and hoping it just goes away. Humorous for a cartoon; deadly for … Continue reading
Posted in Business Acumen, Leadership, Personal Success
Tagged Avoid Problems, Insight, Vision
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Be the Right Kind of Lazy
Laziness gets a bad rap and deservedly so. Of course, we, ourselves, are never lazy. No… Never… But we know other people who are lazy. They procrastinate. They only do the minimum work necessary to stay employed (quiet quitters). Or … Continue reading
Posted in Improve / Turnaround, Perform / Execution, Personal Success
Tagged Getting Things Done, Laziness
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Be a Decision Architect
Good individual and group decision-making is key to being a successful leader and driving a successful business forward. But we are all subject to individual biases (such as Confirmation Bias) and group behaviors (such as Groupthink) that lead to poor … Continue reading
Posted in Business Acumen, Personal Success, Team / People
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Criticize Less
As leaders, we need develop and maintain a strong, positive culture within our companies. To help us do this, we need to stop criticizing so much!! “The first order of business should be to eliminate the negative, not accentuate the … Continue reading
Posted in Leadership, Personal Success, Team / People
Tagged Criticism, Positivity, Winning Teamwork
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Learn Better
When learning new ideas or concepts, most of us learn as we did in high school and college. We listen to a lecture or podcast, read a book or textbook, highlight the key ideas, and then re-read our highlights as … Continue reading
Posted in Improve / Turnaround, Perform / Execution, Personal Success
Tagged Learning, Training
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The When of Negotiation
In negotiation, there is always a bargaining range within which a deal can be struck – a zone of potential agreement. This bargaining range runs from the Seller Breakpoint (the absolute least that the seller will sell their product or … Continue reading
Overcoming the Stupidity of Smart People
Every day, we experience the consequences of smart people making stupid decisions. What causes intelligent people to make decisions that do not work and could never work or decisions that have unintended, negative consequences? Arrogance: Far too many smart people … Continue reading
Posted in Business Acumen, Communication, Leadership, Personal Success
Tagged Decision Making
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Make Continuous Improvement Easier
For all companies, continuous improvement is vital. We and our companies need to be better today than we were yesterday and better tomorrow than we are today. Unfortunately, most improvement initiatives (including most lean kaizen events) fail. They fail because … Continue reading
Posted in Improve / Turnaround, Leadership, Personal Success
Tagged Continuous Improvement
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Don’t Be a Comfort Junkie
I just finished reading an excellent book, The Comfort Crisis: Embrace Discomfort to Reclaim Your Wild, Happy, Healthy Self. As written by Michael Easter, the comfort crisis results from each of us not doing anything uncomfortable: not exercising, never going … Continue reading
Manage the Data Overload
We are awash in data – round the clock news, social media, E-Mails, texts… The challenge for the business leader remains the same: “The important thing is detecting whispers of useful information in a howling hurricane of noise.” The Economist … Continue reading
Posted in Improve / Turnaround, Perform / Execution, Personal Success
Tagged Data Management, Data Overload
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Why Be Humble?
Humility is vital as a business leader and for our teams in several different ways: Humility ensures stronger relationships: With humility, we put ourselves at the same level as those with whom we communicate. This is especially true with subordinates; … Continue reading
Posted in Leadership, Personal Success, Team / People
Tagged Business Leadership, Do the Right Thing, Humility, Winning Teamwork
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Minimize Negativity
Negativity has been with mankind forever. From the perspective of evolutionary psychology, we are all descendants of humans who scanned the horizon for negative (and dangerous) factors, acted to avoid these negative factors, survived, and reproduced. In today’s world, we … Continue reading
Posted in Leadership, Personal Success, Team / People
Tagged Happiness, Negativity, Positivity, Winning Teamwork
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Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things
In his book, Hidden Potential, Adam Grant offers insight into how we can realize our hidden potential and achieve greater things. This advice is relevant to us, as individuals, and as leaders of teams and companies. To give a flavor … Continue reading
Complexity and Problem Solving
I recently listened to a course titled Understanding Complexity. A key takeaway from the course is that the tools we use for regular problem solving do not fully work with complex problems. In regular problem solving, we determine the root … Continue reading
Creeping Complexity
Anthropologist Joseph Tainter writes, “Complexity creeps up on you.” Today, complexity has been creeping up and overwhelming us. Within our companies and in our personal lives, we need to fight hard against this complexity to enable us to realize our … Continue reading
Be Kind
One of our team asked their supervisor (a valued senior manager in our company) whether the supervisor had read an E-Mail that was sent. In front of a group of ten people, the supervisor responded: “I have seen that you … Continue reading
Posted in Leadership, Personal Success, Team / People
Tagged Courtesy, Kindness, Leadership
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Skin in the Game
In a previous job, I had around 100 salespeople who reported either directly or indirectly to me. As a group, they were strong in sales. But they lagged in paperwork, especially sales reporting and expense reports, and in doing any … Continue reading
The Challenge of Being Ethical
“The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.” Groucho Marx “There’s one way to find out if a man is honest – ask him. If he says, ‘Yes’, you know … Continue reading
Posted in Leadership, Personal Success, Team / People
Tagged Do the Right Thing, Ethical Leadership, Ethics
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David M. Shedd - Move Your Company Forward 