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 […]

People love fireworks. Stunning, beautiful displays of harmless power. Well, harmless if fired as intended. We also like sparks. New beginnings. Picturesque showers falling from new buildings under construction. […]

In the previous post, I talked about Unconscious Power, which is one of the effects of having achieved Unconscious Competence in some area of endeavour or growth. Here, I discuss Conscious Authority. I once heard […]

One of the effects of Unconscious Competence is Unconscious Power. Power is the ability to do work, to get things done, to influence people to live at a higher level of consciousness. From that point, your […]

“But then, we might be speaking…a phrase too far…”
Positive speak can literally be taken too far. Just look at the poster above. It talks about being a winner or a learner, never a loser. Now, because most […]

Somebody remarked the other day that he had ordered a meal at a McDonald’s Drive-Through. When he reached the payment and collection counter, he noticed that he had been given a Senior Citizen’s discount. Nobody […]