Random and Tedious

Your strategic plan: What you’re missing

The strategic plan is no doubt very important.

I’ve worked with a few CEOs and other executives in different jobs I’ve had, and I’ve had the honor of meeting a couple of startup founders in different capacities as well. These are all very smart people, and very capable people — although they tend to get off the rails in terms of focus, and more on that in a second.

One term you hear a lot among…

I’ve been put on one performance improvement plan in my life, but in reality I probably should have been put on about 2-3. I don’t say this to indicate I’m a bad worker by any means. I’m not the greatest employee of all-time, but I’m not the worst. The sheer fact of the matter is, performance improvement plan stuff is all about managers covering their own ass. It’s yet another thing we toss over…

Work-life balance key: How work is tracked

I have a bunch of different opinions about work-life balance. At one level, I think it’s a total crock of shit that should be re-branded about 1,927 times over. When I think that way about work-life balance, here’s the deal: it’s total buzzword by this point and it allows everyone to start kneeling in the altars at The Temple Of Busy as they claim achieving work-life balance is impossible. OMG!

T…

Simplicity in business as an advantage

I’ve been thinking about this idea of simplicity in business for years now. Following this bouncing ball, right?

Many people in your office want to tell you how busy they are

In some ways, “being busy” is the cultural currency of the modern age

The problem is: busy doesn’t mean the same thing as productive

Organizations are ultimately judged on some degree of actual productivity, as are…

How to give feedback: Lessons from John Wooden

How to give feedback is a pretty big business topic that we don’t often seem to discuss. Hell, so is feedback in general. I’m a pretty big fan of the whole idea of ‘feedback’ and ‘giving feedback’ and feel like the concept should be a business advantage to most people, but unfortunately it’s not — and here’s the visual to help you understand that.

Here’s the actual problem: a lot of managers don…

The power of business storytelling

I’ve written before about the general power of storytelling — to leadership efforts, for example, or to marketing — but now let’s discuss it in the context of business storytelling.

Here’s a Wharton interview with Carmine Gallo, author of a book called The Storyteller’s Secret. The first thing we’re going to do in this post to try and showcase the value of business storytelling is move it away…

Why the hiring process is broken

My last couple of years have been pretty awkward in terms of hiring process. I worked at PBS from 2011 to 2012, then decided to go to graduate school. That kinda sorta turned out OK, but it took me a long time to get a job once I got my Masters. Then I moved down to Texas for that job, right? And … 17 months later, I got fired. I don’t really look for work right now — I do a lot of freelance— and…

Marketing objectives 101: Stop copying everyone else

When I was a little bit younger, I was often confused about marketing objectives. To be honest, before I even worked in marketing, I really didn’t understand the difference between “marketing” and “advertising.” (Truth be told, most CMOs probably still don’t understand that difference.)

I think it’s worth a little bit of discussion around marketing objectives. Let’s dive a bit deeper.

(more…)

Bad bosses: The circles of management hell

I’ve got a lot of experience with bad bosses (definitely more with that type than with good bosses, unfortunately); I’ve got so much experience with bad bosses, honestly, that I once wrote a post explicitly detailing the 12 worst types of managers you’ll likely have someday. This shouldn’t necessarily surprise anyone, per se — not that I wrote a post about bad bosses (because I’m an inherently…

Business process buried results

Hmmm… business process. That’s a multi-layered topic, no? Let me do my best here.

I think the first place you need to begin is with the idea that for most senior executives — or quote unquote decision-makers — within an organization, business process is sacrosanct to the point that it’s more important than people. That’s probably not good: your processes and your products drive revenue, yes, but…

A data-backed argument for business failure

Business failure: everyone runs from it and no one wants to be associated with it. But maybe that’s the wrong attitude.

Here’s a recent article from Wall Street Journal on the most successful stocks of the past 30 years; Harvard Business Review then invited one of the founding editors of Fast Company to reflect and analyze on the list.

Turns out the highest stock growth since 1985 is a…

The true test of successful organizational development

Organizational development suffers from the same core business problem as many things — it’s hard to measure. Here’s the basic deal with many jobs: even though senior leaders usually aren’t very good at analyzing data in the context of decision-making, they nonetheless still believe that the only things deserving of their attention are measurable things. This comes from an all-consuming focus by…

Management Skills 101: Failure happens

I was just doing some research on keywords around management skills — seems like something I discuss often— and the volume on searches is higher than you’d think (about 1,900/month), yet every article that’s popular around management skills is complete bullshit and fluff. My site isn’t great for SEO — I still think most people find it through “should I move to Minneapolis?” (where I don’t even…

Idea generation is all about persistence

Idea generation would seem to be a pretty big topic in the working world, right? You can argue that ‘no original ideas are left’ — that’s definitely true in content marketing, baby! — or you can argue that the only way to really get at idea generation is to spend money on a software program and throw that at the problem(“We ramped up in Q2 with a digital suggestion box program” is something you…

How to get better at email management

Email (or e-mail, take your pick) is one of the triad of scourges of the modern work world, along with meetings and conference calls. How do you get better at email management, then?

There are approximately 1.5 trillion articles about this topic of email management on the Internet, and honestly — that number might be a bit low in the grand scheme of things. I’ve written about this before, too:…

Bad Boss 101: Country Club Management

This idea of bad bosses / having a bad boss came up at the bar across the street from my house last night. I ran into a couple of people I didn’t know — I think they might be TCU graduate school students — and a few I did, including the main bartender on shift. We were talking about how ridiculous work can be, which seems as good a Thursday evening topic as any, and one of the new people I hadn’t…

Good management skills also create turnover

For years and years, we’ve been hearing that “People don’t leave jobs, they leave managers.” Makes sense and seems logical. It would stand to reason, then, that good management skills would help you reduce churn and turnover — which could be good for your bottom line. I’ve written about all these kinds of topics literally 1,000 times — basically, very few people consider ‘talent strategy’ as…