Are all active sentences commands, e.g., “Go pick up your room,” or “Mechanics shall dispose of their batteries in the blue containers”? No. Are most (if not all) of the active sentences you hear at work commands? Probably. After my post on Tuesday, Write for Action, Mike P wrote: I’ve been thinking about this and […]
Write for Action (Part 2) Read More »
You need top level leadership to support the change you are driving, but do you need them to attend all your meetings? Too frequently teams bog down because they can’t tell the difference between leadership support and leadership attendance. When attendance fades (as it always seems to do with top level leaders), teams immediately assume
Most of the time when we talk about driving change we’re focused on: the goal, the wins along the way, and the pace of our progress. Don’t forget to watch for the fabulous friendships you can form along the way.
…I’ll ask for it, or so the saying goes. The sad part is that too often in organizations, leaders assume they either can’t ask for your opinion without looking weak or they ask for your opinion in roundabout ways (e.g., anonymous surveys, comment cards). Few leaders seem comfortable having an open, sharing ideas conversation with
When I want your opinion… Read More »
If I’ve seen it once I’ve seen it a hundred times. Implementers turn on their tools when a Lean, Six Sigma, Theory of Constraints, Learning Organization or whatever implementation fails. The implementer, let’s call her June, knows the tool should have worked, if only the people would have done the behaviors as requested. She tells
Implementing success Read More »
Imagine your old, driving-people-to-change behaviors as an old, familiar car. It doesn’t run much anymore, but you insist on taking it everywhere you want to go. You don’t go fast. Honestly, most of the time you don’t go at all. It takes more effort than it should. And, you’d likely admit that you often give
Want to go fast? Switch vehicles. Read More »
Sometimes our light goes out but is blown into flame by another human being. Each of us owes deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this light” – Albert Schweitzer Sparkle bright as you drive change. There are those around you flickering. Be the example and transform them into a flame too. We all can
They say actions speak louder than words. That’s so true when you’re driving change and trying to set yourself apart from the pack of people still driving others to change. When you’re driving change you must practice and practice and practice the driving change behaviors until it seems foolish to do anything else (e.g., driving
Whenever you’re working at an event, for work, for your kids PTA, for whatever and someone who hasn’t done any of the work for the event decides to come up and tell you all the things you could have done better, here’s a little trick I call the feedback hook you can use that leverages
Tonight I read to my children from a collection of Aesop’s fables. We ended the night by reading, The North Wind and the Sun. If you’re not familiar with this fable, here’s how it goes (borrowing from wikipedia): The North Wind and the Sun were disputing which was the stronger, when a traveler came along
