Practical Managers

10 Ways to Have a Better Conversation (and be a Better Listener)

“There is no reason to learn how to show you’re paying attention if you are in fact paying attention.“

https://www.ted.com/talks/celeste_headlee_10_ways_to_have_a_better_conversation

John’s 2016 Business Trends

John’s a cool cat with his ears open. His biggest business trends from 2016 is right. I will say I don’t think anything on this list is new except the technology sea change that’s going on around us. Leadership, talent, sales, communication challenges have always and will always be with us. But if you think the last 20 years of having an internet and email around has made your head spin then you…

How Often Should I Give Feedback?

[this is  a summer report series repost]

My Smart House Cat

Sometimes our cat thinks she’s a dog. I believe this because when we house-trained our dog, we hung bells from the back door knob and he learned to ring them with his nose when he needed to go out. Persephone (my daughter named the cat for the Queen of the Underworld, which says more about my daughter than the cat, but not by much)…

Coming in Early is Not a Measure of Worth

Some of my clients praise the staff that come to work early and stay late. I think they’re focused on the wrong thing. I’d rather work with somebody that comes in late, leaves early, and still gets all their work done. That’s the key – are they delivering on their work? What is the quantity, quality, and timeliness of their work?

That’s where you get your value. If you don’t know if you’re…

Your Vision Means Nothing

Truths About Leadership Nobody Wants to Hear Part 5

Not without the credibility and competence to get things done. Lot’s of people have lots of ideas. Some of them are even likable enough to get others interested in it. But without the ability to support that vision with your own hard work it’s probably not going to happen. Nobody likes to be the only donkey pulling the cart, not even other…

Please Don’t Do This

Please don’t do this. This is a dick move. If you need me to explain why in detail to you, I’ll send you my hourly rates…

Unfortunately the company in question had a mealy-mouthed values-based response, including:

“Issues related to that message have been handled internally. The message sent does not align with our core values of personal growth and diversity.”

This kind of corporate-speak damage…

Fail Fast is not “Bail Fast”

It’s an interesting balance to hold: being focused enough on our goals to put the time and work in to make them happen, and yet being “heads up” enough to scan the horizon for opportunities to exploit and move us forward. When do you give up on something that once was a good idea. When does persistence become psychotic?

There are behaviours at either end of the bell curve. Take the Dysonvacuum.…

Changing What Can’t Be Changed

This article I wrote for Results Canada a while ago recently got republished. Since I first wrote it the book “Influencer” has added to the tools and techniques we can bring to bear on getting people to change for the better, and if this is a challenge you face it’s a book that I can recommend.

Enjoy!

Execution Lessons from a High School Class

I like building stuff, and I used to be a Scout leader, so I found this article on building remote controlled cars to teach science interesting. Then I noticed there were a couple of project management guidelines buried in there too:

have sub-goals – quick payoff for effort that is near-term and achievable

tangible objects yield informed decisions

decide constraints (interfaces) before building…

Being productive means different things for different people. For example who’s to say that spending time with your children isn’t an effective use of your time? What it comes down to is being in control of how you spend your time, which means learning to simplify, or even say “no”, to anything else that draws your attention and effort away from what makes you productive, whatever that means to…

Three Keys to Innovation

I had the opportunity to chat with Google’s western Canada director at a tech pitch contest last month, and I asked her how Google manages to keep being so innovative even though they are now one of the largest and most recognized corporations in the world. Her answer made me think “it can’t really be that easy?” a signal which I’ve learned to pay attention to.

Inside Google they use Chat and…

Questions to Jump Start Your Creativity

Jumping for Creativity

Habits are great when then support getting routine chores that don’t require much thought done, but when they start to feel like a jail for your spirit, it’s time to challenge yourself. My friend and social media wizard Ernest has been doing just that for himself that last few years. Well, actually, he does it all the time.

Here are his thoughts provocative:

Questions to…

Your Competence Means Nothing

Truths About Leadership Nobody Wants to Hear Part 4

John Spence talks about how lack of focus hurts companies. It’s true, and not just for companies. It’s also true for leaders of companies, leaders within companies, and individual contributors in companies.

To be clear: individual competence and credibility is necessary. But it’s not sufficient to “just” be competent in order to be anything more…

Clarifying Your So-Called Passion

Three years ago I was going through the end of a 29-year marriage, and it was one of the most horrible experiences of my life (including the month my daughter spent a month in intensive care after she’d been born.)

In order to try to figure out what I needed to do next, one of the things I did was write a letter to my twelve-year-old self. I realize not everybody likes writing to help figure…