I’ve always understood that businesses have a cycle. And what makes good managers and visionary leadership is the ability to ride it. With the possible exception of a startup, which is in a perpetual mad dash, businesses from the service industry to retail to tech all have a native cycle of ebbs and flows. Retail’s […]
I, like many fine people, grew up in Chicago. And as my family is tired of hearing, I love their grid street pattern. Most of the streets are at a right angle with a rational number or naming scheme and traffic systems in place to make an easy transition from small to medium to big […]
At some point, we developed a societal impression that the direction a clock moves is the natural way of doing things. Clockwise is the default pattern, it’s the order you take turns in a card game — it’s ubiquitous. The opposite direction doesn’t even have its own word; it’s just counterclockwise. It isn't a different, […]
You may already be familiar with the famous business management book that gives advice about moving cheese. This is not that. But I don’t like when people move my cheese. Actually, the issue isn’t always people moving my cheese — I’m not generally married to any one location. It’s more the purposeless moving of my […]
Dear reader, you’re clearly a savvy internet user if you’re able to navigate the web well enough to be reading this column. So you’ve probably noticed how you can’t go to a single website today without being prompted to take a survey about your experience or answer questions about the type of content you’d like […]
You’ve been here before. You’re out to eat at a restaurant, and you’re split between two choices. Maybe your friend or partner orders one of the options you were considering, so you pick the other. But one bite in and you’re completely sure that the steak was vastly superior to the pasta you’re chewing. You […]
There’s a refrain I hear somewhat often from a certain type of manager. It goes something like this: “Well, my management strategy is that I don’t let my employees come to me with problems. Instead, I tell them to come to me with solutions. I shouldn’t be the central problem solver — they should!” And […]
In business, you’ll often have one or many partners. These can take a lot of different forms, including formal partnerships, employer-employee relationships, large work groups of your peers, or even the c-suite. But even if you’re Bob Iger, I can assure you that you partner with other individuals with whom you have a regular working […]
If you’ve followed this blog for a while (and if you don’t, you should — my mother likes when I’m validated by followers), you know that I often warn people against following the Tyranny of the Urgent in allocating their time. Best practice practice is to let clear priorities and goals be your north star, […]
