Stuck between mediocrity and excellence

A t the request of an organizational leader, I was asked to read Throwing the Elephant by Stanley Bing. It is a book about managing upward. In the foreword, the third sentence is, "You can't choose your boss."  The book plays on a CEO stereotype that is characterized in many movies, but the most recent one that I can remember is Too Big to Fail. Think Gordon Gecko, Chainsaw Al Dunlap, Robert Nardelli, etc...  My takeaway from the book is that your boss (i.e., elephant) just is, you must figure out how to coexist within its ecosystem.  So the question to me now becomes, why was I asked to read the book? Here are the reasons that I can think of:  To quote a friend, "[Am I] getting Punk'd?" I am a business book junkie, this one never made my radar. Is this a mentoring session? Thinking about myself for a minute, is a message trying to be sent to me?  Or is this a book used to influence a working relationship between colleagues? Develop a common conne...

There are periods of time where I think that I've faked being a management consultant. It's amazing that I've gotten to my age in a profession that is for all intents and purposes highly competitive and full of smart people. There are times where I feel that someone is going to figure me out- and not in a good way. I stayed at a big firm long enough to accept how things were done and challenge why up to a certain point. But I never had the thought of, "This is just plain wrong." I think that's because a defined hierarchy and decision-making process existed. It was easy to understand who made the final decision. In addition, I worked in an environment of like minded people. The rigor in the recruiting process played a large part in that. In a big firm there are more partners, sr. managers gunning to become partners, and even business analysts gunning to skip all of the levels before partner to become partner. That structure and resulting culture stayed con...

Those of you that play Fantasy Football can relate to this. Those of you that are good coaches probably cannot.  On Sunday, Doug Martin blew up for 50+ points in my Fantasy Football league. A few hours before, I was looking at my lineup deciding on whether to keep Doug Martin in the Flex position or start Calvin Johnson who had not practiced all week and had a knee injury. I decided to go and start Calvin Johnson thinking that my 2 other running backs, Darren McFadden and Trent Richardson could carry the load. I did not even think to take Denarius Moore out of the WR2 slot, put Calvin Johnson in there, and keep Doug Martin in the flex position. Maybe my judgement was clouded because I'm a UT fan. Maybe I made the decision based on the information that I received from a zillion sources in my email and online at the time. Either way, I made a very, very bad decision. Given the state of my life right now, being a good fantasy football player is one thing that I set as a part of goal...

My wife brought up a good point last week. She said that the reason nobody reads my posts is that the posts really only pertain to me and my problems.  Shut the front door! She is absolutely right. So from this point forward, I am going attempt to write about topics that 3 or 4 others may be interested in. That will double my readership.  The other day, I referenced Level 5 Leadership in a survey and quickly realized that nobody else that reads as much of that material as I do, would understand what I mean. Jim Collins, in his book, Good to Great defines Level 5 Leaders as ones that  "blend extreme personal humility with intense professional will." John Maxwell describes Level 5 leadership as a leader "who people follow because of who they are and what they represent."  There are a plethora of books on leadership and a number of executive coaches that teach leadership and I figure that I would throw my 2 cents into the mix. Over the past week or two, I n...

One of these things is not like the others, One of these things just doesn't belong, Can you tell which thing is not like the others By the time I finish my song? I read that the definition of culture is an environment where there is a shared and common set of norms and beliefs. I also think that a culture shares a common set of values and a well-defined purpose. In a big firm environment, the culture is driven by competitive people that collaborate with each other to better themselves and their clients. As much as consultants are self-motivated and driven, ultimately, if they didn't think there was a payoff at the end, no one would drive themselves the way that they do. In other words, the carrot was big enough and the 'perception' of the stick was big enough to drive the motivation. The reason that I say perception is that as many times as I didn't do things as planned in a big firm environment, I was still able to survive with better than average performance ...

Every now and then I will get an email from my client that takes passive aggressiveness to a whole different level.  If there was a Master Black Belt in passive aggressiveness, my client would be a sensei.  In my younger years, I would have fired an email right back that would have probably gotten me in trouble. (Not that posting to a blog is any different- if not worse).  Today, now that I'm older, I feel a sense of inner rage, start an email, and then delete the draft. With technology today, it's so easy to blast a text message, a tweet, [a blog post], an email, a Facebook post, etc... and out it goes into the inter-web. I remember the good old days where I would take the time to hand write a letter and make the effort to get a stamp and mail it. That's when you know you are pissed because of the shear time it took to get your anger on paper and into the postal system. But I digress.  I'm lucky in the fact that my parents are Buddhists. The only issue...

I've read that Google has something called 20% time. What this means is that you get to spend 20% of your time doing whatever you want -- as long as it is in the interests of the company. Gmail was one of those things that originated as a part of 20% time. Think about it.  Imagine if you could spend 1 day out of your week working on whatever you want. For me, it would be leadership development. For some odd reason, I have this fascination with personal and professional development, leadership, management, mentoring, and productivity.  I can read book after book on it in the hopes of one day providing that kind of service to help others. In my spare time, I am a beta "mentor" for Modern Guild  and I attempt to pass on sound advice to undergraduate students that definitely have more going for them than I did when I graduated from college.  Unfortunately for me, I'm on what I call 99.9% time. 99.9% of the time I spend doing things that probably make sense for everyon...