Category — Change

Ever start what begins as a reasonable political discussion with your parents… and 15 minutes later find yourself hip-deep in a mucky, confusing swirl, dreadfully off-topic and surprisingly upset?

This doesn’t just crop up at the dinner table, on the telephone, or with your family. Sometimes it happens smack in the middle of your team’s budget review.

I recently stumbled on a post that really got my attention, about people’s ability to hold a point of view – even when there’s strong evidence to contradict it. [Read more →]

Often, when I ask clients how they make decisions, I hear, “Oh, we mostly use consensus around here.”

Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!

Eight times out of ten, these are the same people who also note that group decisions often get reversed, people say one thing and then do another, or that their team spins and spins when they discuss potential decisions, investing loads of precious time but getting nowhere. What I often see is that “consensus” means a decision process that’s unclear or a wee bit sloppy, where the boss ended things with, “Oh, we’re out of time – but we’re all in agreement here, right?” But no one dug deeply for different points of view or concerns, let alone truly addressed them. [Read more →]

Imagine you have a colleague who gets all fired up around focusing more effectively on “the critical few.” He wants to clarify desired outcomes, delegate more, support small failures as learning, and challenge thought process and logic instead of details. Suppose he wisely recognizes that this behavior change will not only create value for his company, but will also unburden him personally, and have a pretty inspiring impact on his life outside work, too.

Now suppose he recognizes all this – can taste it, feel it, is deeply committed to changing his behavior – but when he gets to work Monday morning, he finds himself doing the opposite. Crum. He lets new opportunities distract him, accepts more responsibilities so he sacrifices non-work-related commitments, doesn’t ask for help, and doesn’t balance important, more strategic priorities with the urgent things that come flying at him. [Read more →]

People always ask us for more examples of ways to show – vs. tell – the value of their idea or proposal. Of course they do! Because it’s much stickier and interesting if we ourselves “show” – vs. tell about – these. Here’s one that Alan Scott and his smart team at national consultancy Green Building Services came up with during a recent workshop. The team was working on a presentation about adopting green strategies for a large audience of school principals, administrators and School Board members.
[Read more →]

“Your attention is your most precious asset.”
~ Leo Babauta

Welcome to my blog. It was a long and strange road to get here because, truth be told, I’m a Luddite at heart. More accurately, I’m a neo-luddite: not anti-technology, but determined to use it consciously, with discernment, to make life easier, better, and more fun versus more complex and full of distractions.

What we see at On Your Feet, the creative business consultancy of which I am a part, is that our clients do better work when they are present, focused, and listening – giving their full, delicious attention to what matters most and not simply juggling more stuff, faster.

This is certainly true of my own life.

I’m curious about how social media intersects with and can potentially complement this basic, guiding principle. So this blog is a personal experiment, woven into the rhythm of my work life and my personal life, to create something that might actually help reduce the swirl instead of adding to it. For you, and for me.

I welcome your comments about how it’s going!