the key to business improvement

All it takes is a belief that people are fundamentally good and enough courage to treat your people like owners instead of machines. Machines do their jobs, owners do whatever is needed to make their companies and teams successful.


Laszlo Bock"Work Rules! Insights From Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead", 2015, Hatchette Book Group

his well-trained fleet

While Admiral Lord Nelson may be one of the western world’s most famous military leaders, how many of us know that for much of the battle of Trafalgar, he was incapacitated?

Yes, shot by a sniper at the outset of the battle, Nelson died three hours later as his well-trained fleet went on to defeat the Franco-Spanish armada. Despite being outnumbered and outgunned — and losing their commander in the opening minutes of the fight — Nelson’s fleet won the day without losing a single ship.

Every leader should strive to create this level of independence and self-sufficiency in their organization, as it is the key differentiator of a truly effective and high-performing team.

Chris Fussell

"Eyes On, Hands Off: How to empower your team and get out of their way" Medium. March 15, 2017.

to be of use

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half submerged balls.
I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who stand in the line and haul in their places,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.
The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.


by Marge Piercy
© 1973, 1982. From CIRCLES ON THE WATER © 1982 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. and Middlemarsh, Inc. First published in Lunch magazine.

we need the eggs

Lorne [Michaels] has an indirect and very effective way of dealing with the crazies. It is best described by the old joke that most people know from Annie Hall. A man goes to a psychiatrist and says, “My brother’s gone crazy. He thinks he’s a chicken.” And the psychiatrist says, “Have you told him he’s not a chicken?” The man replies, “I would, but we need the eggs.” Lorne knows that the most exhausting people occasionally turn out the best stuff.

Tina Fey

Bossypants. Reagan Arthur Books. 2011.

the most basic of all knowledge

A report from the National Center for Clinical Infant Programs makes the point that school success is not predicted by a child’s fund of facts or a precocious ability to read so much as by emotional and social measures: being self-assured and interested; knowing what kind of behavior is expected and how to rein in the impulse to misbehave; being able to wait, to follow directions, and to turn to teachers for help; and expressing needs while getting along with other children.

Almost all students who do poorly in school, says the report, lack one or more of these elements of emotional intelligence (regardless of whether they also have cognitive difficulties such as learning disabilities). The magnitude of the problem is not minor; in some states close to one in five children have to repeat first grade, and then as the years go on fall further behind their peers, becoming increasingly discouraged, resentful, and disruptive.

A child’s readiness for school depends on the most basic of all knowledge, how to learn. The report lists the seven key ingredients of this crucial capacity – all related to emotional intelligence:

1. Confidence. A sense of control and mastery of one’s body, behavior, and world; the child’s sense that he is more likely than not to succeed at what he undertakes, and that adults will be helpful.
2. Curiosity. The sense that finding out about things is positive and leads to pleasure.
3. Intentionality. The wish and capacity to have an impact, and to act upon that with persistence. This is related to a sense of competence, of being effective.
4. Self-control. The ability to modulate and control one’s own actions in age-appropriate ways; a sense of inner control.
5. Relatedness. The ability to engage with others based on the sense of being understood by and understanding others.
6. Capacity to communicate. The wish and ability to verbally exchange ideas, feelings, and concepts with others. This is related to a sense of trust in others and of pleasure in engaging with others, including adults.
7. Cooperativeness. The ability to balance one’s own needs with those of others in group activity.

Daniel Goleman

Emotional Intelligence. Random House LLC, 2006. 358 pages, p.193,194

an activity trap

It's incredibly easy to get caught up in an activity trap, in the busy-ness of life, to work harder and harder at climbing the ladder of success only to discover it's leaning against the wrong wall. It is possible to be very busy - very busy - without being very effective.

Stephen R. Covey 

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change. Simon and Schuster. p.98

a hedge against emptiness

Busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness; obviously your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy, completely booked, in demand every hour of the day. I once knew a woman who interned at a magazine where she wasn’t allowed to take lunch hours out, lest she be urgently needed for some reason. This was an entertainment magazine whose raison d’être was obviated when “menu” buttons appeared on remotes, so it’s hard to see this pretense of indispensability as anything other than a form of institutional self-delusion. More and more people in this country no longer make or do anything tangible; if your job wasn’t performed by a cat or a boa constrictor in a Richard Scarry book I’m not sure I believe it’s necessary. I can’t help but wonder whether all this histrionic exhaustion isn’t a way of covering up the fact that most of what we do doesn’t matter. 

Tim Kreider

"The ‘Busy’ Trap." The New York Times. June 30, 2012.

collaboration. not efficient... most effective

Collaboration is a time-tested practice on the path to greater results. The concept is so elementary it doesn’t need much explanation or defense. If you can create the environment for men and women to pool their experience, expertise, education and passion to tackle your most challenging problems, you can create huge competitive advantage....

We have to invest more time together to gain the benefits we seek. Time together is the price you pay for better results. We are discovering this can be both formal, scheduled time, and informal. Regardless, time is essential to be a more collaborative team....

Collaboration is not the most efficient way to work. However, we believe it is the most effective way to work. The more work we have to do the more we need to collaborate; even though it requires more time. This may feel counterintuitive – it is!

Mark Miller

"One Word... Collaboration." Great Leaders Serve. 8/17/2015

the leadership benefits of reading

Broad reading habits are often a defining characteristic of our greatest leaders and can catalyze insight, innovation, empathy, and personal effectiveness.

Note how many business titans are or have been avid readers. According to The New York Times, Steve Jobs had an "inexhaustible interest" in William Blake; Nike founder Phil Knight so reveres his library that in it you have to take off your shoes and bow; and Harman Industries founder Sidney Harman called poets "the original systems thinkers," quoting freely from Shakespeare and Tennyson. In Passion & Purpose, David Gergen notes that Carlyle Group founder David Rubenstein reads dozens of books each week. And history is littered not only with great leaders who were avid readers and writers (remember, Winston Churchill won his Nobel prize in Literature, not Peace), but with business leaders who believed that deep, broad reading cultivated in them the knowledge, habits, and talents to improve their organizations.

The leadership benefits of reading are wide-ranging. Evidence suggests reading can improve intelligence and lead to innovation and insight. Some studies have shown, for example, that reading makes you smarter through "a larger vocabulary and more world knowledge in addition to the abstract reasoning skills." Reading — whether Wikipedia, Michael Lewis, or Aristotle — is one of the quickest ways to acquire and assimilate new information. Many business people claim that reading across fields is good for creativity. And leaders who can sample insights in other fields, such as sociology, the physical sciences, economics, or psychology, and apply them to their organizations are more likely to innovate and prosper.

Reading can also make you more effective in leading others. Reading increases verbal intelligence, making a leader a more adept and articulate communicator. Reading novels can improve empathy and understanding of social cues, allowing a leader to better work with and understand others — traits that author Anne Kreamer persuasively linked to increased organizational effectiveness, and to pay raises and promotions for the leaders who possessed these qualities. And any business person understands that heightened emotional intelligence will improve his or her leadership and management ability.

Finally, an active literary life can make you more personally effective by keeping you relaxed and improving health. For stressed executives, reading is the best way to relax, as reading for six minutes can reduce stress by 68%, and some studies suggest reading may even fend off Alzheimer's, extending the longevity of the mind. 

John Coleman

For Those Who Want to Lead, Read. HBR Blog Network. Harvard Business Review. August 15, 2012