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Category Archives: Personal Success
Four Ways to Overcome Confirmation Bias
The biggest decision-making bias for all of us is the confirmation bias. Wikipedia explains it well: Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one’s prior beliefs or … Continue reading
Posted in Business Acumen, Leadership, Personal Success
Tagged Confirmation Bias, Decision Making
Use the ‘Base Rate’ for Better Decisions
The IT project took twice as long as planned. The construction project to expand the plant went over budget. Why does this always happen? Too many decisions are made with too much self-confidence and too much optimism. As a result, … Continue reading
Posted in Improve / Turnaround, Leadership, Personal Success
Tagged Base Rate, Decision Making, Richard Thaler
Be Opportunistic
“There are smart decisions and wise decisions. And one form of wisdom is the ability to judge when to let luck disrupt our plans. Not all time in life is equal. The question is, when the unequal moment comes, do … Continue reading
11 Keys to Better Decision-Making
Successful leaders make good decisions… consistently. Good decision-making is dependent on a number of factors: understanding, experience, intelligence, foresight, and just plain luck. There is no guide that will tell you how to make the perfect decision. But, there are … Continue reading
Don’t Believe the Hype
“The world is changing faster than ever before.” “We need to adapt to the change or we will get run over by it.” “The paradigm has shifted and the world will never be the same.” “Robotics and AI (Artificial Intelligence) will … Continue reading
Diversity, Inclusion and Respect
Today’s workplaces are more diverse than ever with more work being done in teams. To ensure that everyone is working together well, companies need to be inclusive and embrace diversity and individual differences. The core element behind a diverse and … Continue reading
Posted in Leadership, Personal Success, Team / People
Tagged Communication, Diversity, Inclusion, Justice, Relationships, Respect
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The Do’s and Don’ts of Public Speaking
The ability to speak well in public – whether giving a sales pitch to a customer, presenting at a Board Meeting, or speaking to a large group of employees – is an essential leadership skill. Public speaking is fundamental for … Continue reading
Posted in Communication, Leadership, Personal Success
Tagged Communication, Learning, Marketing, Meetings, Public Speaking
10 Ideas for Improved Organization and Effectiveness
Pre-planning “For every 10 minutes of pre-planning you do, we get four to five hours of productivity improvements.” On a weekly basis, schedule the most important tasks and activities first and build our week around them “The best day begins … Continue reading
Posted in Leadership, Perform / Execution, Personal Success
Tagged Communication, Meetings, Productivity, Project Management, Training
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Write It Down
I have previously written about the fundamentals of communication: The Three Keys of Communication. The focus of that blog was about how we can better communicate with our teams and others by: Keeping the message simple Repeating repeating repeating the … Continue reading
Posted in Communication, Personal Success, Team / People
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8 Ways To Be As Smart As We Can Be
To do our best in business, we need to be as smart as we can be. Alas, I do not have any tremendous insight or magic elixir to make myself or anyone else be smarter. Sorry. What I do have … Continue reading
Posted in Business Acumen, Improve / Turnaround, Personal Success
Tagged Focus, Innovation, Management, Productivity, Success, Teaching
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Getting It Done: Achieving Twice as Much in Half the Time
Posted in Perform / Execution, Personal Success, Team / People
Tagged Business Transformation, Competitive Advantage, Consistent Execution, Decision Making, Employee Engagement, Focus, Leadership Success, Make It Happen, Pareto 80 - 20, Personal Productivity, Prioritization, Simplicity
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Three ‘Cheats’ of the Ethical Leader
An ethical leader is someone dedicated to always doing the right thing for the employees, the business, and all stakeholders. Alas, this ideal for the selfless and driven leader clashes with the reality of who most of us really are. … Continue reading
5 Daily Behaviors for 2017
The calendar says 2017. Unfortunately, far too many of our leaders are leading as if it is 5, 10, 20, even 30 years ago. Old-fashioned leadership and work styles and out dated, time consuming, and all but useless leadership behaviors … Continue reading
The One Thing
In their book, The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results, authors Gary Keller and Jay Papasan suggest that a laser-like focus on the most important is essential to realizing success. Since the book dovetails so closely to … Continue reading
The ‘Crack Cocaine’ of Leadership
Crack Cocaine has three distinguishing features: It gives the user a short – lived, intense high It is highly addictive It inevitably leads to the user’s downfall These exact three characteristics are found when business leaders feed their egos. Let’s … Continue reading
Critical Thinking Skills
I just finished listening to a Great Courses series entitled Your Deceptive Mind: A Scientific Guide to Critical Thinking Skills by Professor Steven Novella. This excellent course offers insight and reminders invaluable to all business leaders trying to think critically … Continue reading
Posted in Leadership, Personal Success, Team / People
Tagged Critical Thinking, Decision Making, Personal Success
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Six Words for Leadership and Business Success
Success… A whole industry has sprung up around helping leaders and businesses get things done, make it happen, and be more successful. It is possible to spend thousands, even millions, of dollars getting advice from these consulting firms, gurus, and … Continue reading
5 Ways Managers Can Make It Happen
In order to move our companies forward, we, as managers, need to get the right things done – the most important tasks that lead to success. This needs to happen in a workplace besieged by interruptions, distractions, and office chatter. … Continue reading
The 9 Steps to Managing Our Stress
As business leaders, our lives are often stressful. Recent research confirms what many of us have observed; stress can harm our careers, endanger our health, and kill. In my career, I have witnessed: A boss retire early from his dream … Continue reading
