Category Archives: Work

Four tips for better group decision-making

Posted on March 28, 2013 by

I’m most of the way through Bruce Feiler’s The Secrets of Happy Families.  The book takes the best, recent insights on how groups/organizations perform and applies it to families and raising kids.  This results in surprising suggestions like using agile … Continue reading →

Posted in Work | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

The risk of being a bull

Posted on March 13, 2012 by

Time is the scarcest of all professional resources, yet we never seem to get enough of it.  A recent conversation with a friend and advisor helped me understand that one of my greatest professional strengths and joys might be exacerbating … Continue reading →

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Meeting math

Posted on March 7, 2012 by

Not so long ago I strong-armed a bunch of my co-workers into reading one of the Domino books,  Read This Before our Next Meeting (free for Amazon Prime members).  The book is a diatribe against the meeting culture and all … Continue reading →

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Labor versus work

Posted on February 2, 2012 by

I’ve been reading Lewis Hyde’s The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World for that last couple of weeks.  It is providing context and depth to my intuitive understanding of generosity and gift-giving, helping me to appreciate the … Continue reading →

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Shorten your backswing

Posted on October 20, 2011 by

It was time today to sit down and write a blog post. I keep track, by email, of blog post ideas when they happen, and was just about to go into that email account when I saw an interesting tweet….that … Continue reading →

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Project leader or project doer

Posted on July 20, 2011 by

There’s a lot of confusion about this one, because you can “do” all the work and not lead, and you can effectively “lead” something without doing all the work. So sometimes someone is asked to “lead” a project and what … Continue reading →

Posted in Work | Tagged , , , , | 6 Comments

Proactive vs reactive

Posted on July 5, 2011 by

In today’s ping-pong world of global teams and connections, zillions of emails, Twitter feeds and Facebook updates, just keeping from falling off the treadmill can feel like success. It might be worth checking, every now and again, how much time … Continue reading →

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Work really hard

Posted on May 19, 2011 by

All the most incredible people I know work hard.  Really hard.  Crazily hard. My first job out of college was as a management consultant.  The deal in those jobs is that you sign away your life for a few years … Continue reading →

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The mutual interview

Posted on May 10, 2011 by

There are two things you’re aiming to accomplish every time you have a job interview: Figure out whether you want the job (assuming yes to question #1) Show the person interviewing you that you want the job and should get … Continue reading →

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PowerPoint 2007 trick – customize menu

Posted on April 11, 2011 by

(this post is an aside, but I was happy to discover this and thought you might be too.  HT to Jan Schultink, who has taught me a LOT more about effective presentations than this….but this little nugget will make me … Continue reading →

Posted in Work | Tagged , , | 3 Comments