Teamwork is an important thing in most organizations. But “Interdepartmental Collaboration” remains an oxymoron, too. Most managers do not collaborate because their measurement systems are not aligned to measure collaborative results and bonuses… Continue reading
Just a thought about how things could work better in some workplaces. We need to think about more possibilities, for sure: For the… Continue reading
Thought you might like this simple view: Managing people and performance IS a juggling act, and there are always things that can be improved. But there are also number of factors that simply… Continue reading
I thought to illustrate a simple poem with a couple of our LEGO® Square Wheels® scenes. Remember that a real key to all this is VISION. For the FUN of It! Dr. Scott Simmerman is a… Continue reading
Sometimes I do get carried away, but a while back, I thought to write a somewhat intentionally MEAN poem about people and performance. And it sat there in my files for a long… Continue reading
I am trying to keep this both real and simple. It IS about involvement and engagement and it IS about asking for ideas and listening to the answers: So, Don’t Just DO Something,… Continue reading
I am not sure how to illustrate this, but I thought to post it. And, to have a visual, I will post up three of my Dumpster posters… It was shared with me… Continue reading
How about this for how things really work in some organizations? The Square Wheels Project is our new online training program to support supervisors in their efforts to motivate and engage their people… Continue reading
I saw a post about how to be a better manager and it focused on listening to people. Not reading it, I guessed that it says that if you listen to others, you… Continue reading
I thought you might like this poem using my US / THEM theme and a focus on change and improvement. By clicking on this image, you will go to my slideshare site where… Continue reading
Thanksgiving is almost upon us again, so I thought to pop into powerpoint and spin up a few poems about workplace performance, people and communications. I also put a powerpoint file of a… Continue reading
Our flagship team building game focuses on the leverage points of having fun playing and solving a problem and on the main issues around collaborating among different teams. So many workplaces can benefit… Continue reading
There are about 5 different threads that got me to the point of posting this. But the end result of the refocused energy was actually pretty good, I think: Here is the Dr.… Continue reading
Thought you might like this poem on teamwork and organizational behavior as it meshes up with the idea that our wagons are often bogged down in the mud of reality and politics: We… Continue reading
I love those Dr. Seuss kinds of rhyming so I thought to lay out one that focuses on continuous improvement, change and innovation and on the issues of personality. To generate change, you… Continue reading
Thought you might like this little glimpse of organizational reality, but here is my LEGO version of how things really work in most organizations along with a Dr. Seuss-style poem of the commonplace… Continue reading
Well, when one gets into the grove of messing around with poems, one actually starts messing around with poems. I’ve always liked that Dr. Seuss style of saying things so there is a… Continue reading
All of us can look back over the year and see successes and we can all look forward to see opportunities to work together and generate new and improved results. Innovation often takes… Continue reading
This is one of my Dr. Seuss-style poems on organizational leadership and development. Leadership is about knowing that there are many more smart people in your group than you. There are many more… Continue reading
Playing with some comments on Dan Rockwell’s blog with talk of courage and change and I thought to pop up a Haiku on the theme. Change is about choice. Without change, little happens.… Continue reading
In reading a post in a long thread about how to build teams for organizational growth in a LinkedIn discussion group for HR people, I continue to be struck by the seeming reality… Continue reading
Hope you like this little ditty. Hats off to the Cat in the Hat guy… The Square Wheels theme is one of possibilities, but if nothing changes, nothing improves. So, the situation rhymes… Continue reading
That first little cute poem led me to making a bigger longer and maybe better poem around people, performance, innovation and improvement. So, we have something that looks like this: Innovation comes from… Continue reading
Here is a cute one about motivation that comes from continuous improvement: Sure can be fun out there! See our toolkit on Manager as Motivator, a Square Wheels-based training package For the FUN… Continue reading
Uploaded into Slideshare is a compendium of some thinking on Teaching the Caterpillar to Fly and managing and leading change, something that I have been working on for 20 years. The slideshare contains… Continue reading
Here is another ditty about work and working, along with connections to how I use the metaphor of 50 feet along with the telling of my Moose Joke: My Moose Joke uses this… Continue reading
My colleagues talking about strategy implementation got me thinking about how I often see the reality of cascading a strategy from the top down through the levels of management to implement new ideas… Continue reading
I continue to play with the puppies. They are just such cute things. But the linking of puppies back to the performance improvement of the pushers and puller continues to be a difficult… Continue reading
Creating butterflies in your workplace would seem to be a lot better than simply supporting the lifestyle of the caterpillars. The related thought is that caterpillars are a lot easier to manage. Is… Continue reading
I put up a series of cartoons and text, taking some screenshots as well as leaving them in modifiable form. You can download them for free and either use my screenshots or customize… Continue reading
I continue playing with the bigger powerpoint file and the creation of poems and questions for followup in Lost Dutchman team building game and around the Square Wheels illustrations. As my friend and colleague… Continue reading
It was suggested to me to expand my illustration and poem collection to add some followup poems on performance and teamwork around the notion of Turkey Day and Thanksgiving, so I have been… Continue reading
The Jeep causes teams to creep. But discovery of a Turbocharger allows that jeep to go twice as fast / twice as far. Turbos are best practices that enable people to dramatically improve… Continue reading
It is about having fun, playing with new ideas, and then anchoring those new ideas to commitments for improvement. So, people Celebrating Success is an obvious key. It builds spirit and allows for… Continue reading
The “team communications” and agreement cartoon in the boxes below is one that we use a good bit in the debriefing of The Search for The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine, since it has… Continue reading
Teamwork is about groups of people making shared decisions and working together to implement solutions to shared problems. In our Lost Dutchman team building exercise, teams get resources to manage and decisions to make… Continue reading
Teams need to “cross the desert” and get to the Mine where they can find the Gold. This is the metaphor of The Search for The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine and also a… Continue reading
Much of the play of our Lost Dutchman team building game is about managing resources so that the team’s vehicle can make it to and from the mine with as much Gold as… Continue reading
We often use these “View from the Top” illustrations to show how things might or should look and how they really look. We have a dozen or so illustrations from the Square Wheels… Continue reading
This is one of the little ditties that rolls out of our Lost Dutchman game, where the goal is to Mine as much Gold as WE can! ALL of us can do better… Continue reading
Don’t Just DO Something. That just gives you the same old thing, day after day. Stop. Step Back. And Stand There! Take a real look at what is happening and what COULD be… Continue reading
This is the third of the ditties on Overpass and the issue of alignment and making progress. Hope you like it: It IS confusing out there and making the right choices is… Continue reading
Trust is a big factor in how people and organizations perform. Trust is the residue of promises fulfilled, as Frank Navran said. My “Overpass Image” was done up for me to show how… Continue reading
My “Overpass Image” was done up for me to show how things are all interconnected and linked, but that the links could be really confusing. As proof, I simply offer “Atlanta.” Some… Continue reading
You would think that the solutions to problems would be obvious. But one also needs perspective. And teamwork. Involving and engaging people requires their participation in the act of being involved and… Continue reading
Some thoughts on allowing people to play with ideas, and those ideas will transform themselves into a different reality. But it is really hard to innovate when all you do is pull and… Continue reading
This little ditty popped into my head while I was thinking of some conversations with my pal Lucy Freedman of Syntax. We share a background of NLP and similar behavioral approaches to improving… Continue reading
Engagement, innovative design, and teamwork go hand in hand for designing better products and services. Daniel Kahneman’s work on “Thinking Fast and Slow” clearly shows that different patterns of thinking will generate better… Continue reading
If you don’t believe this little ditty, just try showing the Square Wheels One illustration to a group of people and ask them what is happening and how the cartoon might represent how… Continue reading
