The biggest source of individual failure: Shame
In 1997, Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin made a movie called The Edge. The basic premise of the movie is that a couple of people go down in a plane crash in the middle of the wilderness. They survive...
View ArticleNerves wrack us all
In my previous job, I delivered a lot of customer briefings at the Executive Briefing Center – to the tune of hundreds. At one point, I was the leading presenter for a couple of years in a row and had...
View ArticleBright spots: Focus on what’s right, not what’s wrong
Before I get into this post, I want to credit one of the books responsible for shaping my experiences here. For anyone who is leading or wants to lead organizations, you simply must read the book...
View ArticleManaging the capability-experience gap
It is exceedingly difficult for individuals to match their capability to perform a job or function exactly with their experience in that role. For the upwardly mobile, being promoted into a new...
View ArticleThe myth of the Grand Master Plan
When we see people accomplishing big things, we tend to ascribe success to the existence of some master plan. For those of you who watch Netflix’s House of Cards, the tendency to believe in these Grand...
View ArticleHelp fuel the growth – Plexxi’s taking off
It’s rare that we indulge in self-promotion on the Plexxi blog, but permit me this transgression. Plexxi is going through a growth spurt. And we are looking for uniquely capable individuals to add a...
View ArticleHow to control the ebb and flow of work
One of the most important jobs of a manager is to control the natural ebb and flow of work to strike a balance between idle time and burnout. The notion that people cannot endlessly toil without a...
View ArticleReal employee value goes beyond what you produce
When people think about their value to their company and to their manager in particular, the tendency is certainly to create a scoreboard that lists all of the accomplishments over whatever period of...
View ArticleOutcome bias and the psychology that prevents sustained success
In psychology, there is a phenomenon called Outcome Bias, which basically means that we tend to judge the efficacy of a decision based primarily on how things turn out. After a decision is made, we...
View ArticleDealing with vs. Celebrating failure
There’s a meme that has been making the rounds through leadership circles for some time around celebrating failure. If you aren’t failing, you aren’t pushing the boundaries. The original premise of...
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