Innovation

…Helpful thoughts for the next steps in your life’s journey   Every year, beginning near the end of May and continuing into early June, there is a flurry of ritual activity at this country’s educational institutions. In the U.S., there are over 4,200 degree granting colleges and universities and over 20,500 high schools who each […]

Several times over the past few years, the Tuesday Reading has focused on biases: Biased? We all are. Bias — If you have a brain, you’re biased. Mitigating Bias — When hiring staff. Train Your Brain — To help you avoid your biases. Today, we continue with this general theme focusing on the unconscious nature of many […]

… “A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.”       –  Lao Tzu, Chinese philosopher from the 6th century B.C.E. All journeys, whether they are physical journeys by foot, by car, train, or plane, or journeys of the mind where you work small step by small step to solve a problem, resolve an issue, or […]

… That could be a good thing.   “I’m bored.” Now, that’s a sentence everyone has heard, or spoken, or thought many times in his or her life. And, in spite of what you may have been taught, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. What might be bad is how you respond.   Wikipedia1 reports that […]

Harry Davis is the first individual to connect leadership and performance art that I ever encountered. He is the Roger L. and Rachel M. Goetz Distinguished Service Professor of Creative Management at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. We met at the 2008 MOR Leaders Conference1 where Professor Davis was the featured speaker. His […]

… Discover the Value of Idleness Being born in the middle of the Great Depression means that the words “lazy” and “idle” take on special meaning. In the southeast Texas town of Shepherd where I first lived, regular jobs were few. My maternal grandfather had one of those jobs, railroad section foreman responsible for maintaining […]

… a technique that allows people to iterate on ideas without using harsh or judgmental language. While used typically in teams and on the ideas of others, plussing works equally well on one’s own ideas – when one’s self critic can be particularly vocal. You may never have previously encountered the word “plussing.” Neither had […]

Today, most organizations, including a university’s IT organization, structure their work through a set of teams. Other examples include professional sports teams with their structure, their practice day-after-day of plays they may execute in the game, and a surgical team that performs the same procedure, for example, hip replacement, under tightly controlled conditions, perhaps multiple […]

… it’s really not an option  Reflection is about “careful thought.”  Jennifer Porter, leadership and team development coach, says that “the kind of reflection that is really valuable to leaders is more nuanced than just ‘careful thought’.”  The most useful reflection involves the conscious considerations and analysis of beliefs and actions for the purpose of learning.”  […]

Today, in the United States some four out of every five individuals age 5 and older have some type of cell phone.  And, most of these have sufficient functionality to be called smartphones.  This is in stark contrast to the time when I was growing up in a small rural southeast Texas town.  Then and […]