Disruption can be scary. And fear leads people to do foolish things, like clamp down when they should lighten up, or focus on execution when they should foster creativity, or work harder when they should work smarter. Instead of contracting in fear in the face of disruption (and let’s face it, who isn’t afraid of […]
Three Secrets to IT Technology Success that have Nothing to do with Tech
All too often in business, we think technology is the secret to success. The truth is most IT technology projects fail. And the essential ingredients for success have nothing to do with technology. To discover your organization’s foundation for success, check out my latest blog post at Feast On Good. Here’s the link: http://feastongood.com/2014/07/secrets-to-tech-success-that-have-nothing-to-do-with-technology/ […]
Burritos vs. Bonds – Chipotle crushes Pimco
One of the best things to happen in my family’s travel life was the moment several years ago that we discovered a Chipotle Mexican Grill at the exact midpoint of our drive to go skiing in Vermont. After years of suffering through the usual fast food choices, we were thrilled to find there was a […]
Creating a Culture of Appreciation
Everyone likes to be appreciated — to know that something about us or what we do is seen, noticed and has an impact on someone else. Appreciation in this context is more than simply noticing. It means that someone is affected by us or what we do on a physical, emotional or spiritual level; […]
How Corporate Culture Drives Profits
These days, it’s not unusual to hear investors and others talk about socially responsible investing, seeing a connection between a company’s social behavior and its economic performance. But back in the late 1960s, when Jay Bragdon was a young investment analyst in Boston, such an idea was fantasy. Bragdon decided to take a look at the […]
Mindfulness is not enough
With this appearance of a front-page story in the Sunday New York Times Style section, I’ll declare that Mindfulness (hereafter known with the capital M) has arrived and achieved fad status. And what a great fad it is! Far superior to clothing styles or celebrity diets, Mindfulness has huge advantages for those who try it. […]
Learning to laugh, cry and scream at work
Most people think of the workplace as an emotion-free zone. Dispassionate reason based on facts is supposed to rule supreme. In fact, the workplace has as much emotion as the rest of human experience; we just suppress it at work. And instead of going away, those emotions leak out in undesirable ways, from passive aggression, […]
The age of vulnerability
Katharine Viner, Deputy Editor of the Guardian newspaper, delivered a tremendous speech recently about how the digital transformation affects journalism. Check it out here, or if you don’t have a lot of time, read this excellent summary from PaidContent. Her basic point: digital changes everything. It’s not just a new platform for the same old […]
Note to self: Pay attention! (real attention)
We’ve all been there, checking our email or the latest Facebook ping instead of attending to the actual humans around us. This recent story from Huffington Post nails it: putting our attention on our handsets instead of humans kills our connection to others. Sure, we can keep up with a conversation or meeting while checking […]
Missing the target
I was listening to a presentation from the leader of a hospitality industry company the other day, watching as he recounted with pride all the millions they had invested over the past year to improve their product, the many changes they had made in response to customer feedback, the attention they put on providing an […]