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Leadership

How to Cast Vision with Your Team

Hate to tell you, but if you are patiently waiting for upper management to proclaim their vision for your work and your team, it most likely is NOT going to happen. Or at least in the degree of granularity you might be hoping for.

We all want to have work with meaning – and as a leader, it is your job to help create that meaning. The good news is that each of us has the ability (and perhaps the obligation) to cast vision – for yourself and your team.

The notion of vision scares us at times. It sounds big. Pretentious. Unknown and unknowable. You might struggle with deciding what is “too big” and what is “too little”. I encourage you to acknowledge the doubts and plow ahead. I’d much rather put my effort toward a “too big” vision than none at all. And if you err by starting small, you will have at least started. Small steps are better than no steps. …

Leadership

Mary Parker Follett: Influential Visionary

I stumbled across Mary Parker Follett’s name about six months ago in the book, The Power of Collective Wisdom. My curiosity got the better of me – and I dug deeper. And what I found was the work of a brilliant women with great influence. Some call her the “mother of modern management.” How is it that I know her work and not her name?

In celebration of Women’s History Month, I honor this female visionary. Although I never knew her name till recently, my study of her work reveals just how much of my practice in leadership and organizational dynamics is influenced by her…

Change

Would You Rather be Change Managed or Change Engaged?

Make no doubt about it, as change management emerged in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, it was a big step forward. The fact that someone, somewhere in the organization was helping employees through a structured methodology that included awareness, communication, and training began to address the compelling realization that people were most often the “make or break” factor in the success or failure of any change effort.

Yet change management, to me, conveys the ideas of doing something “to” people rather than “with” people. What if the mind-shift changed a bit? From change management to change engagement?

Change

Make it Easy to Do the Right Thing – Planning a Successful Change Initiative

We all fall prey to the path of least resistance – doing what is easy and expedient over what is in our long term best interest. We are hungry and pop into a convenience store, where we are overwhelmed by poor choices. Do we seek out the isolated piece of fruit hidden among the chips, candy and donuts? I don’t know about you, but peanut M&M’s win out every time for me.

Understanding the human proclivity to take the path of least resistance can help us design ways that “pull” people into the desired behaviors more easily. That’s why this simple mantra can make a big difference in any change initiative…

Performance

Fueling Your Fire

I believe each of us has something that sparks us. It may be our work, or our family, or social justice, or the environment, or any one of a thousand things. I also believe that it is far too easy in our hyper-paced world to let that spark turn into a raging fire that consumes us. Work demands are high, needs are everywhere, we are connected 24/7, and being busy and feeling overwhelmed is the predominant mode.

In grade school we learned the three elements needed for combustion: a fuel source, oxygen, and a spark of heat. I think the same conditions apply to our inner fires: we need something that we are passionate about to spark us. But we also need to be diligent to avoid being consumed by it.

Accountability

Ten Things Accountable People Abhor

I’m not sure how we came to the point where demanding accountability is equated to finding a scapegoat, placing blame, and demanding retribution. The cry for “someone to be held accountable” is code for finding someone to fire or dismiss so that business can go on usual. It has very little to do with what I would define as true accountability.

It’s very easy to spot someone with a high degree of personal accountability by what they do and don’t do…

Performance

Which is More Important – Dreaming or Doing?

Folks get tripped up in the dream/do cycle. There are two types of traps:

Doers who believe that dreaming is a waste of time. Far better to do something, anything. And oh, by the way, they are far too busy with all they are doing to take some time to pause, reflect, or allow themselves to imagine anything other than their current state of affairs.

Dreamers who believe that what they think up will magically manifest itself once they articulate the dream in some manner. They create the vision board, sit back, and wait for good things to happen.

Both are dead wrong.

Goals

The Spirit of the Season – All Year Long

How would you be different if the spirit of this season lasted all year long? As you pause, cease your paid labor, gather with friends and family, take a moment to reflect on the messages that this time of year brings, and determine what parts of this holiday you’ll carry forward. You can be a light in the darkness, you can bring hope to those in despair, and by caring for others you’ll find you’ve cared for yourself.

Leadership

Collective Wisdom or Collective Folly: What Do you Nurture as a Leader?

I often say “we are smarter than me,”… referring to the increased capacity, deep wisdom, creativity, and solid decisions that groups of people can make – as opposed to one individual acting in isolation. No matter how smart that one person is, in general they will be “outsmarted” but a group of people. That is, of course, if that group of people can work together effectively.

Briskin, Erickson, Ott, and Callanan examine the phenomena of group decision making in their book, The Power of Collective Wisdom: And the Trap of Collective Folly. They answer how groups can come up with novel and powerful solutions to intractable problems at times – and at other times wallow in cobbled together solutions that are amazingly awful.

Learning

Share a Story this Thanksgiving

As you gather across the generations this Thanksgiving, I encourage you to share stories as well as a meal. Share them, celebrate them, and save them. We all have a life story – and the longer we live, the richer the story. Far too often in our fast-paced, media-driven world, the most meaningful stories can get lost. It is an act of affirmation to be asked to share our story. It is an act of love to listen. When we ask and then listen – we not only affirm, we learn. We enrich our family history. We understand our families, ourselves, and our world, in a new and more balanced way.

National Public Radio (NPR) has created the perfect way for you to capture the stories of those around you. Using their StoryCorps platform, they have issued a challenge: to collect 120,000 stories over the Thanksgiving weekend. Their goal: To create an archive containing the single largest collection of human voices ever gathered.

Evergreen Leadership Blog

How to Cast Vision with Your Team

Mary Parker Follett: Influential Visionary

Would You Rather be Change Managed or Change Engaged?

Make it Easy to Do the Right Thing – Planning a Successful Change Initiative

Fueling Your Fire

Ten Things Accountable People Abhor

Which is More Important – Dreaming or Doing?

The Spirit of the Season – All Year Long

Share a Story this Thanksgiving

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