Our behavior is a result of causes and conditions. One thing paves the way for the next. Elements of the first thing create a preferential path for the next thing. If someone gets praised for doing A, more people will do A, even when A is the wrong behavior. If......
Cigarette companies rebranded themselves because their products caused cancer and they wanted to separate themselves from how their customers experienced their products. Their name and logo (which stand for their brand) were mapped to bad things (cancer) so they changed their name and logo. The bad things still happened, but......
To: Leaders of the Company, We’re still out of gas. Corporate initiatives and reinvention are important, but so are the fundamentals of meeting customer orders and keeping the production lines running. And so is our emotional well-being. We cannot do it all. Our youngest children must go to daycare and......
Did you engage today with someone that needed your time and attention, though they didn’t ask? You had a choice to float above it all or recognize that your time and attention were needed. And then you had a follow-on choice: to keep on truckin’ or engage. If you recognized......
When you were wrong, the outcome was different than you thought. When the outcome was different than you thought, there was uncertainty as the work was new. When there was uncertainty, you knew there would be learning. When you were afraid of learning, you were afraid to be wrong. And......
When you don’t know what to do, what do you do? This is a difficult question. Here are some thoughts that may help you figure out what to do when you really don’t know. Don’t confuse activity with progress. Gather your two best friends, go off-site, and define the system......
If there’s one superpower to develop, it’s to learn how to assess a project and get a good feel for when it will launch. When you want to know how long a project will take, ask this simple question: ‘What must the project team learn before the project can launch?”......
When you want new thinking or rapid progress, create a small team. When you have a small team, they manage the handoffs on their own and help each other. Small teams hold themselves accountable. With small teams, one member’s problem becomes everyone’s problem in record time. Small teams can’t work......
Clean-sheet designs are fun, right up until they don’t launch. When you feel the urge to do a clean-sheet design, go home early. When you don’t know how to make it better, make it worse and do the opposite. Without trying, there is no way to know if it will......
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