Engagement and The Boss – a Haiku
I was reading Dan Rockwell’s twitter feed, looking for some ideas to help frame up our new revision of the Seven Seas Quest team building game and thought to reframe one of his… Continue reading
Category Archive: change and choice
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Thinking Agile, for MoreBetterFaster Improvements
GapingVoid had a nice image distributed through email with text that got me thinking about Square Wheels® and Agile Thinking that I reframed into my scheme of things. Their focus was on business… Continue reading
Leadership: Playing The Fool
ASKING for ideas is a powerful way to drive active involvement and participative learning within a workgroup. It can build teamwork and peer pressure for improvement and the reality is that asking is… Continue reading
Take the Time Needed to Change and Improve
It is oft-said that Time changes Things, and maybe there is some truth to that. The notion of entropy says that things eventually reduce themselves. But in the case of real people doing… Continue reading
Round Today, Square Tomorrow
The Big Idea is Continuous Continuous Improvement, because what works smoothly today will invariably not work as well in the future. The keys include perspective, collaboration and teamwork to implement and adjust those… Continue reading
Dream to fly or dream to dream? On Caterpillars and Butterflies
I was looking for something else and came across this old line art poster when I did a lot of work on managing and leading change. I thought it was a good one!… Continue reading
Thinking about Thinking
There are all kinds of “contemplation figures” out there. I thought to add one more, this one around possibilities. Your thoughts? One needs to stop pushing and pulling, or at least ask… Continue reading
Don’t Just DO Something! Stand There… A Square Wheels Poster
Instead of our usual poem or haiku or quote offering, this post shares one of the Square Wheels Poster Images, something you can download and print. The message is clear, whether it is… Continue reading
The Round Wheels of Change – a business haiku
Change is always an interesting process. So is innovation and creativity. Communications is such a critical factor. How are you doing with YOUR workplace communications and engagement? For the FUN of It! Dr. Scott… Continue reading
A Desk is a Dangerous Place from which to view the world…
John LeCarre said in one of his books, “A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world.” And most of us would certainly agree with that assessment. I would add… Continue reading
Irish Prayer about People and Performance
Twenty five years ago, at least, I came across The Irish Prayer. I saw it again recently, in somewhat different form so I thought to share it reframed again. Sometimes, the apparent limping… Continue reading
The Ditch. The Road. Your Choice
Leading teams is about communications and shared missions and goals. Too often, wagon pushers are not involved and engaged nor do they have a clear sense of where they are going. The reality… Continue reading
Team Building Success – The Stairway Model
Heavy drinking last night must have given me the idea of The Stairway Model of Team Building Success. You be the judge… The Stairway Model develops from the Escalator Model, which was built… Continue reading
Business Haiku on Engagement and Discontent
Possibilities and Potential. Ah, if we could only get there from here… I continue to think that improving active involvement and generating some positive Disruptive Engagement are pretty straightforward, at least insofar as… Continue reading
Success takes care of itself?
There was a Henry Ford quote that clanged with me so I popped it into my Square Wheels powerpoint master file and came up with an image for discussion. So, I got this:… Continue reading
Business Haiku on Strategy Execution
How DO we make progress and execute our strategy initiatives? Well, communications and engagement are certainly key issues. Perspective and the sharing of visions and goals is also necessary. Implementing strategy is a… Continue reading
Business Haiku – Working Hard and Making Progress
Here are two new Haiku sprung from my newer Square Wheels images about how organizations really work. Your thoughts? If you have needs for more teamwork to generate better business outcomes, consider that… Continue reading
Workplace Happiness – YOU Choose!
Yes, “work” can and does get old, especially when you choose to do the same things for the same reasons with the same results, day after day and week after week. On the… Continue reading
Thoughts on Questions – a quote on patience
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves.” is a quote from the poet Ranier Maria Rilke It speaks to the issues of being… Continue reading
Learning is a Round Wheels Treasure
Here’s a Chinese Proverb about LEARNING that is also about perceptual acuity and perspective, collaboration, engagement, empowerment and all that stuff. The key is to spend a minute in silent reflection / meditation… Continue reading
New Year Resolutions in Month Eight
It is August. How are you doing on your resolutions to improve your workplace now that it is Month Eight? There is still time to get things done more better faster. For… Continue reading
Learn to See – Da Vinci and Square Wheels of Connectedness and Engagement
I read this quote from Leonardo da Vinci and checked it for authenticity and then popped it into the context of organizational improvement. I am guessing that his workplaces in his times were… Continue reading
Positive Disruptive Engagement – a Definition
We need to better involve and engage people in our workplaces, and we cannot do that by implementing another survey or continuing to do things the same way. We need to Free The… Continue reading
Business Haiku on Improvement and Square Wheels
Joan and I sit here looking at stuff and she wanted me to update a haiku and post it up, so she can see the process. Hope you like this one! Let’s Get… Continue reading
Disruptive Engagement – Bad Policies need Perspective
This relates to a blog I posted up about really lousy customer service from the Taylors’ Branch of the Greenville SC Library System. I was shocked at the extraordinarily tight security on checking… Continue reading
Business Haiku on Thumpy Wheeling and Positive Disruptive Engagement
How DO we get things rolling to improve empowerment and engagement? Probably by DIS-un-empowerment and DIS-un-engagement practiced by the workplace supervisor. Who else will impact the people and change the way things work?… Continue reading
Consider The Gap – the issues between ideas and implementation
“Change is Good. You go first,” was one of the quotes in The Dilbert Principle, a book on business principles and organizational improvement by Scott Adams. And there is something to be said… Continue reading
Choose or Lose – a Business Haiku on Disruptive Engagement
Supervisors have to make Big Choices, every hour of every day. And one thing that seems to be missing, based on zillions of surveys, is their effective motivation of their people and their… Continue reading
Business Haiku on Making Progress with Square Wheels
The Round Wheels are already in the wagon, and people can easily discover that. But sometimes they need outside inspiration or a challenge to really understand that they need to do things #morebetterfaster… Continue reading
Business Haiku on motivation and innovation
Simple and self-explanatory CAN we have innovation without involvement? Don’t the bosses need to be actively involved and aware themselves? For the FUN of It! Dr. Scott Simmerman is a designer of team building games… Continue reading
Questions to be asked about people and performance – Square Wheels Project
Performance improvement is about conversations and perspective. The people know what needs to be done differently, so asking for their ideas and input is a really effective strategy for some disruptive engagement: The… Continue reading
Fear is the Mindkiller – Support The Supervisor
I blogged about task interference and the issues around training and motivation in the workplace but this is the poster I stuck in to illustrate the issues faced by the ONLY people who… Continue reading
Balance, Zen, Choices and Square Wheels
Going through some of the older line art around the issues of leadership and choices and how we think about thinking about things, I thought you might like this one. I mean, the… Continue reading
Simplicity of Problem Solving – Find the ROUND Wheels
Lots of people are random sorters of information, possibilities sorters, and their preferred styles of thinking might be expressed as, “Throwing mud at the wire fence to see what sticks where…” For those… Continue reading
Shifts in Thinking – Some Reframing Ideas
Thinking – Breakfast of Champions. So what did you think and what might you think? It is all about the choices we make,    For the FUN of It! Dr. Scott Simmerman is a designer of… Continue reading
A poem on People and Performance, Commitment and Motivation
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
Haiku on Motivating and Engaging and Workplace Improvement
How do you motivate your wagon pushers? You have to involve and engage them in organizational improvement. Check out The Square Wheels Project for some ideas about implementing positive Disruptive Engagement to make… Continue reading
Disruptive Engagement – How ELSE are you going to change things?
Organizations keep doing the same things and expecting engagement and motivation to improve. And, worst than foolish, they are spending millions of dollars on doing surveys to show them that nothing is really… Continue reading
Haiku on Thoughtfulness
Here is a haiku poem on Thoughtfulness and another on Consideration. In both cases, the focus is on making improvements in how things work to roll forward #morebetterfaster. The Round Wheels are already… Continue reading
Wagon Pullers ARE Hardworking – a Square Wheels Business Haiku
Wagon pullers pull. They work hard to move their wagons fast forward. But wagon pullers could also benefit by involving and engaging their wagon pullers more effectively, by working to facilitate involvement and… Continue reading
Choice and Choices – Do Things Differently!
Things are the way they are because they are what they are. We know that nothing made sense, because neither did anything else. So, instead of wondering why, wonder what. Wonder what you… Continue reading
Mark Twain quote on getting started
I disagree with Twain. A lot of people have already started. The key is to make sure that you are doing things effectively and efficiently. Read more about it by clicking on the… Continue reading
Ideas Wanted – a graphic about organizational improvement
I am in a new LinkedIn group and the question came up about a simple abstract about a long article that I posted up to Pulse about government employees and motivation. You can… Continue reading
Simple Thought on Team Perspective
Teams are powerful tools for implementing changes and improving workplace performance. Teams also impact leadership and can work for you or against you, depending on the organizational culture. Sometimes, it pays to simply… Continue reading
Birds and Roads, a paradox
I just saw an article in LinkedIn that talked about life being a road with lots of signs and that we should visualize what needs to be achieved and convert that into the… Continue reading
The Future: More Square Wheels®
I was thinking about the future a while ago and realized that, for many, it arrived last year or even many years ago, in regards to how they deal with change. In picture… Continue reading
Team Support – Getting Change to Happen
My Square Wheels® cartoons are about getting things to change. One idea is to step back from the wagon and dissociate, giving you the opportunity to see things differently. Another is that you… Continue reading
Managing and Leading Change
For the past 20 years, I have been playing with the theme of managing and leading change. One reality is that you cannot push change onto someone else. In that way, it is… Continue reading
Persistence – Not Enough by Itself
My friend Kevin Eikenberry tweeted today that, “Persistence matters for matters of personal achievement and leadership.” Since I had just posted a picture blog of Perfectionism in this poems and quips blog, I… Continue reading