After establishing vision + mission + values as the solid core of a business, we explored the first leg of the stool: the vision — a vivid and detailed picture of success at a chosen point in the future. Coincidentally, Zingerman's last week rolled out their 2032 vision. Their visioning guru, Ari Weinzweig wrote about it in his weekly email, showing how powerful a good vision is — how it can guide an organization to greatness. It’s an inspiring read.
Now, we turn to the second leg of the stool: the mission.
Read MoreI’d been facilitating vision + mission + values work for almost a decade when I found myself in a ZingTrain Visioning workshop wondering how Zingerman’s, a community of businesses in Ann Arbor, Michigan, spawned from a humble deli, had come up with a tool that would transform visioning and strategy for my clients. Most vision statements are one-liners like Unilever’s “To be the global leader in sustainable business” — lofty, yet not particularly actionable — more of a tagline than a specific future people can build together.
Read MoreWith Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JP Morgan/Chase combining forces, and Atul Gawande leading it, how could the Haven healthcare venture not work? Formed in 2018 to provide less expensive, better, and easier healthcare in the U.S., Haven is shutting down after just three years. In fact, it seems it never really got going.
Read MoreIn the midst of the post-election news blitz, a different kind of story got my attention. Burt Thankur, November 5th’s Jeopardy! Champion gave this emotional response when asked by Alex Trebek if there was anyone at home cheering him on: “Here’s a true story, man, … I learned English because of you. My grandfather, who raised me...I used to sit on his lap and watch you every day. So, it’s a pretty special moment for me, man. Thank you very much.” Did that ever bring a smile to my face as I thought about how that show had been a staple in our household as my kids grew up, everyone shouting out the answers. I think I hold the household worst record of right answers to the number of shouts.
Read MoreWhen the economic crisis descended in 2008, I was involved with Oakland-based East Bay Community Foundation. We watched helplessly as scores of nonprofits were decimated. Yet, in the middle of the worst of it, a few were thriving. Curious, a couple of senior staffers wanted to know why. They found three things these thrivers were doing: they (1) adopted a razor sharp focus on the programs that had the greatest impact, (2) communicated — up, down, sideways, and all around — keeping all stakeholders informed, and (3) did what they said they were going to do. They delivered results.
Read MoreWhat am I supposed to do with all this money? That’s not a lottery winner asking. It’s what University of British Columbia psychology professor Elizabeth Dunn asked herself when she scored her first job. She scanned the research that revealed money often fails to buy happiness, yet she wondered if there was a way to spend money that could increase happiness. She teamed up with fellow psychology Ph.D. and HBS professor Michael Norton to look into it.
Read MoreWhen Yale psychology professor Laurie Santos became head of a residential college for first-year students, she was shocked by the level of stress, depression, loneliness, and anxiety the students were experiencing. That, and her own self-described “below average” happiness level inspired her to create a course packed with evidence from the happiness research landscape that debunks what we’ve been conditioned to believe will give us the good life, exposes the faulty wiring in our brains that conspires to lead us astray, reveals what does make us happy, and teaches habits we can form to get there.
Read MoreClasses begin at Harvard Business School this week, and a course that’s sure to fill up fast this year is Associate Professor Alison Wood Brooks’ new offering How to Talk Gooder in Business and Life. It’s based on gobs of data revealing the importance of how we talk — not the proper use of language or presentation skills — how we converse each other in our daily lives. Students will learn conversation skills based on research insights through lots of practice, feedback, reflection, and wisdom from occasional guest “practitioners” such as matchmakers and comedians.
Read More“I just knew.” It’s that feeling you instantly got when you met “the one” or clicked with a friend. Or when you instinctively knew that dog or cat that stood out from the rest of the litter was the one coming home with you, or that house or town you stepped into and just felt at home in. We’ve all experienced this kind of knowing.
Read MoreLong before the hammer of social distancing shattered our ways of connecting, causing us to quickly pivot to figure out ways to be together, and worry about the emotional effects of isolation, sirens were sounding about loneliness as a global public health problem. Former Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy declared loneliness an epidemic in 2017.
Read More“Want to know what we SUCK at? Training our Managers! Well, this week that started to change with Fireclay Tile’s first ever “Ganas to the People” where we took every team member with direct reports offsite for 2 days of training, inspiration, and connection.” And, after thanking the people who made it happen, CEO Eric Edelson offered, “If you want to know our agenda or what we shared, please send me a note, as I know these can be intimidating to think about. Hint...it definitely involved one of my new favorite books, High Output Management by Andy Grove.”
Read MoreToo many meetings — meetings without a purpose, redundant meetings, or meetings called instead of a simple email or quick conversation. Even when they’re necessary, too many people are there, many show up late and tap away on computers or are glued to phone screens, loud voices dominate, discussions go long and veer off-topic, and mind-numbing PowerPoint decks zap energy. Nothing useful gets done. And bad meetings can take up even more time at the “meeting after the meeting,” where people let off steam with each other about how bad the meeting was. I often hear “I have to come in early, stay late, or work the weekends to get my work done because I’m in meetings all day.”
Read MoreCulture woes. They’re a constant: my team isn’t gelling. We’re missing deadlines. Mistakes keep repeating. We’re siloed. We show up late to meetings even though we committed to being on time. Or, even at home: chores we agreed to go ignored, or some sort of disrespect has crept in.
How do we create the culture we’re aiming for?
Read MoreSleep is the new black and some of us are just waking up to it. (I couldn’t help myself.) After a client told me I had to read Matthew Walker’s Why We Sleep, and Bill Gates gave it the nod in his GatesNotes last month, it moved to the top of my bedtime reading stack.
Read MoreAs the new year approached last month, my inbox was filled with books, articles, TED talks, and podcasts aimed at weeding out bad habits and growing good ones. We are what we do, and we do countless, repetitive things daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly — consciously and unconsciously. These habits get us on the road (or not) to our intentions, so giving them an annual tune-up keeps us in good working order. A couple of resources that have been on my radar for awhile are worth sharing.
Read MoreAs they do every December, both Oxford Languages (Oxford English Dictionary) and Merriam-Webster announced their word of the year for 2019…
I knew what my word of the year for 2019 was going to be in January. It was my word of the year in 2018. It’s an odds-on favorite for 2020. It’s pervasive in our work, our lives, relationships, our current events. Or, should I say its absence is pervasive.
Read MoreOften dismissed as nothing more than a dinner party game, sometimes misused to label, pigeonhole, or stereotype people, and occasionally the backdrop for Dilbertian team-building moments, personality typing is both widely used and controversial. I’ve found personality assessments to be an anchor tool in the emotional intelligence toolbox.
Read MoreNo, not Dairy Queen. This DQ stands for “decency quotient.” I love the word decency. Respectable and moral behavior. DQ hit my radar earlier this year when Bill Boulding, dean of Duke’s B-School, penned an HBR piece inspired by Mastercard CEO Ajay Banga. Fast Company gave it a mention recently and connected the concept to the Business Roundtable’s recent Statement of Purpose committing member companies to move beyond shareholder returns, and “lead their companies for the benefit of all stakeholders — customers, employees, suppliers, communities, and shareholders.” This so-called “new capitalism” is encouraging. Let’s hope it takes hold.
Read MoreA long time ago in a culture far, far away, a sophisticated system of knowledge — spanning the human body and mind, stars and planets, physical space, and more — was created by a people equipped with their five senses and the only computer around at the time: the human brain. “They outlined techniques that include body exercise, mind exercise, . . . and many other methods that are now proving to be some of the most integrated ways to leverage our human potential.” The Business Casual Yogi: Take Charge of Your Body, Mind, and Career (BCY), by Vish Chattergie* with Yogrishi Vishvketu, translates this Vedic system of knowledge (believed to have originated over five thousand years ago in the foothills of the Himalayas) into a “comprehensible and relevant” set of tools for modern leaders.
Read MoreI was causing a ruckus with a controversial proposal in a leadership team meeting a few years ago. Tensions were high. Faces were red. Veins were bulging. It was beginning to break into a full-on yelI. I caught the general counsel’s eyes — he’d been staying out of it — and said, dryly, “This is going well, don’t you think?” After an awkward pause, everyone laughed. I’m not going to tell you the rest of the meeting went my way. I will say it helped turn down the heat measurably.
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