Stuck between mediocrity and excellence

Whether you are a running a supply chain or designing software, there is one thing that has to be true -- your operations and design must be focused on meeting customer requirements.  Whether it's a desired service level, an ease-of-usability, or just pleasure of doing business-- how you do things and what you deliver must make the customer happy.  So why do some organizations produce products that people aren't happy with?  As organizations grow, more people get involved in processes.  As more people get involved, a middle occurs where literally nothing gets done.  The middle is filled with meetings.  The middle is filled with no action items.  The middle is filled with executive charisma and management posturing. The middle has lost sight of the customer and has 20/20 vision when it comes to individual objectives.  It's this swirl in the middle that slows down overall progress -- puts a stop to organizational excellence if you ...

'Cause we all just wanna be big rockstars And live in hilltop houses driving fifteen cars ~ Rockstar by Nickelback In any performance review process, there will inevitably be words that consistently pop up when describing how an employee has performed.  For those that meet expectations, you'll hear words like "solid," or "dependable," or "reliable."  If you have always been in the top 15% of your class, these words are nice words to hear, but not the ones you want to hear in a performance evaluation.  For overachievers, these words put you smack dab in the middle of the bell curve. You are the average now.  The employees that are considered to walk on water, however, will consistently be described by one word, "rockstar."  At my old firm, the word was used so much that we actually removed it from the language of any future assessment.  A universal truth is that performance reviews will always have some degree of subjectivity...

When I was recruiting the best and brightest minds into management consulting, we always said that we wanted "out of the box" thinkers.  And then we wanted them to conform to the rules and methodologies of the Firm. Such is the irony.  I don't think it really hit me what out of the box meant until I watched a Project Innovation through Design Thinkin g webinar that was available for free on Stanford's Center for Professional Development site.  It presented a question that asked, "How much can you make with $5 and 2 hours?"  It turns out that the top 3 answers were this: One group thought like I did and framed the question as an investment one. They bought a bicycle pump and went out on campus to offer the pumping of tires for a fee. That really didn't catch on. So they changed their strategy and offered pumping tires for free, but asked for donations. They made considerably more by asking for donations than they did when charging  a fee.  An...

Performance reviews are viewed as a necessary evil.  HR needs documentation of your performance over time in the event hard decisions need to be made when it's time to cut staff.  Employees hate to hear negative feedback because after all, nobody is perfect. But the fact of the matter is that when performance reviews are done right, the employees are better off which directly affects the performance of the organization. How do you know if your performance review process isn't quite up to par?  Your fate has been predetermined. A old colleague of mine had a Japanese word for -- nemawashi--- these are the meetings before the meetings when the decision has been made on your rating and promotion. When these meetings go too far, it completely undermines the process if someone is doing their due diligence and trying to put together an objective view of an employee's performance.  There is zero accountability. If timelines come and go and nobody meets them when ...

A universal truth is that politics exist within every workplace environment.  You may read about workplaces like Zappo's and Menlo Innovations . And to many of us that read about these places, there is a certain degree of skepticism because we have experienced no such nirvana.  However, the truth is that such places exist and the leaders of these companies have learned to minimize or eradicate the office politics that can drag down the productivity or efficiency of a company. Worse, office politics can keep the organization from coming close to realizing it's potential.  In the majority of companies, office politics abound and it's primarily driven by the leadership that's in place.  Here's how to tell if you are dealing with a leader that is a political animal. This is dangerous, both for employees and the company. When talking to your peers about a person they either say, "Watch your back," or "He / she is dangerous."  Red flags sho...

That is how much Powerball is up to today. Ask yourself what you would do with that much money?  9 out of 10 of us would quit our job and do what we truly want to do.  But what exactly is that?  If I'm having a hard time answering that question, I'm sure a lot of other people would have a hard time answering it as well.   Every life or purpose coach is going to ask you, "If money were no object, what would you do?"  Write?  Volunteer?  Play golf?  At some point, acquiring material wealth is going to get old -- just ask my 4 year old that has every toy known to man and is still bored.  I think my answer would be to buy a company and see if I could run it. Then I could put all of the things that I rant about into practice.  What would you do? 

There was one of those motivational picture things on Linkedin that said,  A bad job with a good boss is better than a good job with a bad boss.  Then there's another one that says,  People don't leave companies, they leave bad leaders (or managers ).    Which one is it?  I agree with the Marcus Buckingham point of view that people have to like what they do.  When people like what they do, then who they work with becomes far more tolerable. For example, when I left a big Firm, I loved who I worked with and I liked what I did.  I developed many friendships and have seen many people that I have worked with become successful in their own right.  Along the ride, I had many leaders and managers that weren't very fun to work with. But the reason I stayed is that for the most part, I genuinely liked the people that I worked with.  For the majority of us, we are not exactly in a good job- we are in a job that is acceptable or t...

As managers, you have probably been counseled to provide feedback in the form of a sandwich.  Start with what people do well first (i.e., strengths).  Then proceed to tell them what they need to work on. (i.e., weaknesses -- or the softer term - developmental opportunities.)  Finally, reiterate what they are doing well.  If this is the way that you provide feedback, please stop.  The issue with the feedback sandwich is that everyone wants to get to the meat and in this case, the meat is the negative feedback.  In addition, out of your entire conversation, it's the negative feedback that will be remembered because we've all been conditioned to work on our weaknesses.  Effective managers provide feedback along the way and don't save it for a performance review period. That includes both positive and negative feedback.  If the negative feedback is severe, then it definitely warrants a focused and separate conversation.  We work...

The passing of Stuart Scott had an impact on all of us that grew up with SportsCenter.  He brought the "cool" factor to sports highlights.  He was the guy that I could relate to when watching ESPN.  In reading one of the well-deserved articles on Stuart Scott, he had a quote that resonated with me. In reference to Scott's competitive nature -  "According to anchor Scott Van Pelt, "Stuart would always say to me, 'Game recognizes game.' You try to bring out the best in yourself so you can bring out the best in the person next to you." It's our responsibility to bring out the best of a coworker, your child, your family, and anyone that you encounter. When you are in a job, there is an unsaid level of respect that has to exist among peers and leaders.  Just because a person has a title doesn't mean that this level of respect is automatically earned.  You have to have game. It's obvious that Stuart Scott earned that level of...

There's an article on  espn.com  where Kobe Bryant criticizes AAU basketball programs and praises European players' skills.  "AAU basketball," Bryant said. "Horrible, terrible AAU basketball. It's stupid. It doesn't teach our kids how to play the game at all so you wind up having players that are big and they bring it up and they do all this fancy crap and they don't know how to post. They don't know the fundamentals of the game. It's stupid." Kobe comes from an era where the basics and the fundamentals mattered. At it's most basic level, basketball is about dribbling, passing, and shooting.  At least that's what my 4 year old is learning.  What he's NOT learning is how to be on an And 1 Mixtape Tour anytime soon.  In the world of business and consulting, Kobe's opinion and point of view also applies. It's easy to get caught up in the hype of a culture, the charisma of a leader, and the cool perks that an o...

http://www.yourturn.link Buy it. Bookmark pages. It's worth it. 

Resilience ::  the ability to become strong, healthy, or successful again after something bad happens. - Merriam-Webster  Insanity :: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. - Albert Einstein Read enough books on raising successful children and you'll see the words, "resilient" and "grit' come up time and time again.  The more that your child is willing to work through a problem and not give in to immediate gratification, the higher the likelihood of him or her becoming successful in life.    What's missing from the equation is the "why" or purpose of working through the problem of delaying gratification in the first place.  As children, motivation may have been more extrinsic than intrinsic. But as adults, it's definitely become more intrinsic. (Although many companies would like to believe that throwing points, icons, and cash at you is motivation in itself).  If you don't believe that there ...