When I was working for myself and leading a small company things were much easier. The 60 hour work-weeks, lack of vacation time, and total consumption in the work and building of the company were hard, but in a small company in a leadership position you never had to worry about what you said or […]
Category Archives: Blog
Why are you Here… and What are you going to DO about it?
Over the past few months I’ve come across some very valuable thinking and ideas that have made me examine a great deal of how I approach my life and work, and I’ve been struggling a bit to pull the ideas together into a coherent and meaningful framework. This is my attempt to summarize and bring clarity […]
The Importance of Book Ends
Take a look at your book shelf. You might have a nice built-in bookcase, an IKEA Billy case, or perhaps an open shelf on the wall, but any of them will do. Now imagine that your book shelf didn’t have any sides or book ends… how easy do you think it would be to keep your library […]
Where Are You Going?
There’s an old saying that failing to plan is planning to fail. It holds true as much today as it ever has, but I’ve been thinking about it a bit lately and the more I think about it the more I think there is something missing from this sage advice. Planning is critical… as long as […]
Loss Aversion and the Importance of Changing Your Lens
There is a concept called Loss Aversion that suggests that we hate losing exactly twice as much as we love winning. That concept drives our behaviour in predictable ways and is a key driver for our aversion to failure in our work. For that same reason I think it is twice as important to focus […]
This Makes You… Think?
I came across this graffiti painted on the back wall of a building at Yonge and Greenfield in Toronto and I was drawn to it instantly. Most tagging mostly makes me angry at the gall of people who violate the property rights of others, but this one was different – it had a message. If […]
The Power of Radical Goals
How do you set goals in your organization today? Surely by now we all define our goals according to the guidelines of SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely), so everythings great right? What if I told you that SMART goals are self-limiting? What if I told you that if you insist on defining SMART goals that […]
Modifying Drucker’s Five Most Important Questions
In his book The Five Most Important Questions You Will Ever Ask About Your Organization, Peter Drucker offers a tool for self-assessment and transformation in his “Five Most Important Questions You Can Ask”. The questions are designed to drive action and create focus on doing the right things to drive exceptional performance within your organization, only […]
Commit to making Errors of Commission
According to Rosabeth Moss Kanter, when it comes to innovation the big mistakes are “generally not errors of commission”. Put another way a former boss used to say “if you’re not failing you’re not trying”. Ultimately they both mean that it’s actually the lack of innovation that is the most risky approach to doing business. […]
The Slipping Point
At some point in the evolution of even the most successful companies, an interesting thing happens – growth stalls. Even the brightest and most experienced Entrepreneurs and managers are perplexed as the things they did to create the initial growth in the company no longer drive new revenues. In fact if they stick with old […]