Book Review:
Awesomely Simple: Essential Business Strategies for Turning Ideas into Action
By John Spence
In the introduction to his book Awesomely Simple, author John Spence declares: “everything in this book is from real life: you’ll find no fluff, no grand theories, no intellectual back-flips.” Readers who want complex organizational theories or a rigorously annotated bibliography will have [...]
Our 5-part series on positive office politics, (The P Quotient) is drawing to a close. In this final installment, Jane Perdue looks at personal influence, one of four key behaviors needed for a person to be considered politically savvy in a productive way.
Just tuning in to this fascinating topic? Start here for the first [...]
It’s great when a fellow blogger inspires me to get revved up on a topic. And so it is with Mary Jo Asmus’ series on the role that employees should play in helping their leaders improve. Last week, in response to her post “Bad Manager or Flawed Human?” the discussion on her blog was lively. [...]
Now, here’s something you don’t see every day: a company CEO sitting in the firm’s break room playing cards with his frontline employees.
Or do you?
This is the question I’ve been pondering for awhile after I witnessed this exact scenario at a client’s headquarters a few weeks ago. After making a few discreet inquiries with other [...]
The other day I had lunch with a colleague. Sally is a mentor to me and it’s always a treat when we get together to talk shop. At one point in the conversation Sally said, “Do you ever look at someone else and wonder, “They’re so successful [running their business]. How do they do it? [...]
I recently gave a presentation on Networking Styles to members of the GRAPE organization (Grand Rapids Area Professionals for Excellence.) Several of my colleagues indicated interest in attending, but could not, so here’s a summary, divided into three parts. Part I, “What Savvy Networkers Know” outlines my “nuggets” gleaned from years of building a strong [...]
I just returned from conducting on-site meetings for a new client. The CEO of this company hired me to help his employees make the transition to a new organizational structure. We’re doing a series of input meetings, SWOT analyses and informational interviews. Something that one of the employees said this morning is really sticking with [...]
On September 8th, 2009, I accepted Sandra Martini’s 30 Day Blog Challenge. Simple contest: blog 30 times in 30 days to see what will happen when a person does “one ordinary thing” consistently. I knew going into the contest that it would indeed be a “challenge”, and not because there wasn’t anything to write about. [...]
The other day I was exchanging emails with my friend Kathleen who has extremely diverse interests. She’s an accounting software trainer/working artist / gallery owner. (How’s THAT for variety?!) It had been awhile since we’d talked and I inquired—“how are you?” Kathleen emailed back, “I’m fine…well, OK. But ‘OK’ is the new ‘Fine’, right?” After [...]
Marcus Buckingham wants to teach women how to live a “strong” life. He says a strong life is one in which you are able to discern the activities which energize you, catch those moments and cradle them so that you feel fulfilled—personally and professionally. That’s a pretty tall order, especially when coming from a man. [...]
