Are you someone who is constantly “Thinking out of the box?” Is your organization known for “Out of the Box” thinking and innovation? Why? Do simple re-conformations and incremental improvements represent […]

The concept of “There is no second chance in life” appears to be quite deeply rooted in society. It is manifested in various ways. One of them was that if you as a young student went to one of Singapore’s […]

I had a rather refreshing conversation with a younger person this morning. It was refreshing because he was giving off good vibes about his developing and sustaining good relationships with his clients as well as […]

Of course I made that up. Of course I made that up just to get your attention. There is much talk about constant change and the need to be adaptable. There is little positive action in that regard. Here are two […]

To be given a mandate is to be authorized to make decisions and take action in line with the intent of the authority giving the mandate. The nature of the mandate is very important. It needs to be clear, […]

Excellence is really an everyday thing, just like being a champion is an everyday thing. I used to say “Don’t sweat the small stuff. Sweat the small stuff.” Now, in the interests of those who don’t appreciate […]

Communities of Practice?
A community of practice (CoP) is a group of people who share a craft and/or a profession. The concept was first proposed by cognitive anthropologist Jean Lave and educational theorist […]

There is an old song which goes “Killing me softly with his song…”, to which the title of this post alludes. The song describes how the writer went to hear a singer and was struck by how the singer seemed to […]

Blind faith in the immutability of the bell curve spawns quite a few fallacies, of which the title of this post is one. It prompts us to prefer “dumbing down” instead of “raising up”. Of course it does, it’s much […]

Links in this post lead to video clips.
I’m not talking about the desire to become rich and famous or becoming known as a “Great Man” or as a “Great Woman.” I am talking about growing so much as a leader that […]

I am always amazed at how people will argue endlessly with each other over “which method works better” or even “which is the right method” instead of taking a step back, recognizing the doctrine from which the […]

If we eat, work, stretch and exercise proportionately, growth takes place. If we sit on the couch, drink beer and eat potato chips whilst watching TV and playing all sorts of fun and amusing games, growth occurs […]

We are enamoured of highly-sculpted bodies, rippling with high-definition muscle. Even couch potatoes secretly wish they could all be like that to some degree. We may not all want to have the huge muscle mass, but […]

For domestic chickens, a chick hatches after a 21-day period of incubation. The chick has to peck thousands of times at the shell before it emerges. It is a slow, laborious and exhausting process, and by the time […]

Your organizational culture can be described as how you habitually run things around the place. If your culture is one of excellence, it will be reflected in the spirit in which work is executed and the manner in […]

There was a Puma ad that said basically the same thing some time ago. What do I mean when I refer to “half measures”? Our society is prone to taking action, regardless of whether the action actually makes sense […]

In yesterday’s post, I talked about being careful to empower only the right people. Enabling people is helping them in terms of ongoing character development. This is highly intensive, requires investing of your […]

One of the buzzwords today is “empowerment.” We want our people to have greater autonomy, have more say in making decisions that affect the company and generally having higher stakes in the company’s future […]

With apologies to Jane Austen.
Consigning other people to hell as we define it, thinking less of them than we ought to, and thinking better of ourselves in the same manner, are all manifestations of pride, of […]

Standardization. The rallying cry of optimization maximizers. In today’s innovation-centric environment, this might sound a little ho-hum to you. Which way are you inclined, optimization-centric or […]