Customers – They Feel The Bumps and Thumps
We spend a LOT of money on marketing, generally defined as the effort to attract new customers and retain new customers. But the reality is that we spend a LOT of that money… Continue reading
Category Archive: change and choice
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Innovation – How does it get started?
I am a big believer in continuous continuous improvement and workplace innovation driven by people who have their hands on the wagon and know what is not working smoothly. Innovation does not always… Continue reading
Play: Never The Same Old Ideas
Some 25 years ago, Randy Ranslaben gave me a name for one of the original line-art Square Wheels illustrations. He called it, “Wheel Time Twaining” and it looks like this: The idea was… Continue reading
Creating Support for Change
We often find that change is resisted. I’ve written extensively on this in my regular blog posts, like this one on “The Reality of Change, Innovation and Employee Engagement,” and this one on… Continue reading
Business Haiku on Innovation
This is apparently National Poetry Month, so I pressed up this old line-art Square Wheels illustration with its accompanying haiku: I want to set this up with the LEGO, but I thought to… Continue reading
A Desk is a Dangerous Place
I got some new brown LEGO pieces, so I had to mess with the wagon and make it bigger. Then, I stored on some additional wheels, with the same three wagon pushers and… Continue reading
Square Wheels Haiku on The Passion for Change
The people at the back of the wagon might seem resistant to any imposed changes that management — the wagon pullers — might suggest. But plenty of research has found a large difference… Continue reading
Square Wheels Haiku on Organizational Improvement
It’s been a while since I popped a haiku into the poems blog, so here is one on the issues of leadership and organizational improvement. The wagons roll along like they always have,… Continue reading
Poem on Teamwork (and Politics)
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
Square Wheels Dr. Seuss-style Poem on Being Bold
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
Moron National Employee UN-Appreciation Day
My cynicism continues this morning as I read more about the dis-connection of so many workers as I write on my developing toolkits of Roadblock Management and of Facilitation for Workplace improvement. They… Continue reading
Engagement and Motivation – a Management Competency Checklist
After posting up a blog about the irony of actually celebrating a single day called National Employee Appreciation Day — think about that or check out my blog post — I was thinking… Continue reading
Managing Roadblocks: Dis-Un-Engagement
More to come on this shortly, but I have started rebuilding an old toolkit on Managing Roadblocks and will start using Susan and the LEGO to model the concept and the opportunities. Basically,… Continue reading
Mistakes and Innovation – Impact of Learning
Recent talk in a LinkedIn Leadership Group got me thinking about how we deal with mistakes in the workplace. Some managers do it well and some do it badly, generating what the literature… Continue reading
The REALITY of Innovation and Improvement
My belief is that innovation and improvement are incremental processes that generally occur in small, sometimes continuous steps forward. There may be occasional mistakes or failures but teams of people can often implement… Continue reading
The Play is The Thing!
I was in the middle of a response in one of my LinkedIn forums and thought to quickly put this together and up. We sometimes take work so deadly seriously, and we get… Continue reading
Square Wheels Images out of LEGO
My “old” version of the new LEGO illustrations looks like this: and my son pointed out to me that this is NOT all “official LEGO pieces” like the smooth wheel in the middle… Continue reading
The Eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend
I saw Henri Bergson’s famous quote in an article on thinking and visioning and thought to illustrate the idea. Originally, he was thinking of this as a metaphor for thinking, but we know… Continue reading
Continuous Continuous Improvement – Reality
In a LinkedIn thread, the issue of organizational improvement was raised and I commented about the reality that continuous improvement was something that many managers strive to achieve, once! Too many people simply… Continue reading
Innovation, Creativity and People
We like to think of ourselves as rational human beings, making good sense of everything that happens in our environment. The reality is that we are creatures bounded by our imagination and self-deceptions,… Continue reading
Nothing Made Sense – A LEGO Square Wheels Image
A similar quote to this turned up when I was reading Closing Time by Joseph Heller, the author of Catch 22. The latter is one of my favorite books of all time, so… Continue reading
We LAUGH at Square Wheels. Levitation!
Why not simply laugh at the antics of those people pushing and pulling a wagon on Square Wheels? It is simply so silly! What do you think they do things that way? If… Continue reading
Dr. Seuss might say this about Leadership
I thought this might make a good one-liner on the theme of leading people and improving motivation. Reframe the “care” word to anchor it to the issues of people and performance. Caring is… Continue reading
Making Improvements in how things work
We tend to approach the workplace as a highly complicated interrelationship of hundreds of twisted systems, policies, procedures and programs. Just the thought of “how to motivate people” will make some managers cringe… Continue reading
Thinking: Beliefs versus Actual Creativity
Most of us are creative and innovative when it comes to solving problems, we really are. But it would also appear that most of us go through a phase where we lose that… Continue reading
Motivation for Millenials
New Directions shared some solid stuff on motivation and engagement in an email. I thought I would pop up a really simple post linking their work to my illustration of how things really… Continue reading
Haiku on TeamBuilding and Teamwork and working together
Teams can form up quickly, but a team may be only a team and not part of any larger team, which is why interdepartmental collaboration is an organizational oxymoron. A cartoon haiku for… Continue reading
I’m Thinking Thoughts on Motivation and Improvement
Thinking. A good idea for most managers. Perspective. A good thing for most managers. Engagement. A good process for most employees. Improvement. A good accomplishment for most organizations. Implementation. A difficult task for… Continue reading
Santa, Square Wheels, LEGO and Issues of People and Performance
I got the Santa Creator Set from LEGO and started messing around with my Square Wheels representation of how things really work in most organizations. After all, should Santa’s be expected to operate… Continue reading
It’s not the destination, it’s The Journey: A LEGO Square Wheels Poster
One of my friends popped me this quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson that I thought to posterize. So, I took my poster on the theme of ISOLATION and revamped it with the quote.… Continue reading
Working and The Living Dead
Will work actually make you a Zombie or is that simply your choice for how you do things? Will you just stumble along unmotivated and uncaring about the world around you or will… Continue reading
Agile Workplace Practices – A Reality
We hear that “agile” is the new way for a lot of organizations, with the goal of thinking in less constrained ways and in ways to enable better responsiveness on the part of… Continue reading
Thinking about Leadership – Simple Considered Alternatives
How we think about things influences how we perceive the world. Our brain works as one big filter and categorizer and puts frameworks around how information is processed. And it is that framework… Continue reading
Yes, you CAN be a more engaging leader of teams
You do NOT need to be a professional facilitator of teams in order to generate more intrinsic motivation and engagement. All you need to do is involve people in aligning to the vision… Continue reading
Simple Thought on Good Strategic Planning
Lots of data suggest that good strategic planning is different than good strategic planning implementation, and that 90 to 95% of initiatives fail to meet management expectations even though the initial thinking was… Continue reading
Behaving Engaging – a LEGO Square Wheels Poster
A discussion group in LinkedIn had a post today about “GO” being the first thing that someone should do as a new manager. DO SOMETHING seemed to be the main thrust. I wrote… Continue reading
Creativity, Courage and Time – Keys to Implementing Improvements
Here is another in the “Courage Series” of Square Wheels LEGO business haiku. This one simply illustrates the need for speed and the requirement that communications is effective for involving and engaging the… Continue reading
A Square Wheels LEGO Haiku Poem – On Courage and Change
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
Stupidly Simple Engagement
Everybody has ideas and everybody has perspective. But perspective is relative to where you are and what you do. Often, the wagon-pulling boss simply cannot see the actions and activities of the wagon… Continue reading
LEGO Square Wheels of Continuous Improvement: Hey, Boss!
It has always been my belief that the best ideas for improvement always come from the people who are doing the job and have a hands-on reality of how things work and what… Continue reading
“Got A Minute?” – Take a Perspective Innovation Break
Dan Rockwell started his post today with, “Got a minute” and how that could turn into a significant time investment for managers, since it could help them focus on what is wrong and… Continue reading
LOOKING for Change, A Change of Perspective
Change is about considered alternatives, since you cannot make changes happen until there is a viable alternative to what you are doing now. Stepping back from the wagon is a way to generate… Continue reading
Story of Courage, Leadership and Teamwork
I packaged up a slideshare program telling the story of Susan, a wagon pusher, and her courage in suggesting that her wagon-pulling boss take a different look at how things are working, with… Continue reading
THE REALITY OF CHANGE – A Square Wheels LEGO Poster
One of the cartoons I have used for many years is what I called The Reality of Change. In it, one of the Square Wheels wagon wheels is broken and the team is… Continue reading
COACHING? Who Needs Coaching! We have WORK to do.
I was about to respond to a LinkedIn thread when I realized that I needed a new poster, so here is one on Coaching. Of course, I am tongue in cheek when I… Continue reading
WORKPLACE HAPPINESS: A Square Wheels Poster on Motivation and Improvement
My associates in Japan changed their company name to “Work Happiness” and have been going gangbusters with their overall growth in services. My initial thoughts were it was too fluffy a company name… Continue reading
Devil’s Advocate – a Square Wheels LEGO Poster about decision-making
I am going to post up a much longer article around the issues of decision-making and the requirement that someone be appointed to a role of simply challenging assumptions. But for the moment,… Continue reading
Trust. Discontent. A Square Wheels LEGO Business Haiku
Here is another business Haiku around the theme of trust, discontent and motivation that I thought you might like. The ideas for improvement are already in the wagon — the cargo — but… Continue reading
Trust – A Business Haiku of Square Wheels and LEGO
Here is another Business Haiku I thought you might like. It’s about the reality of people working together. It is about environmental awareness of managers, not just their focus on productivity and production.… Continue reading
LEGO Business Haiku of Square Wheels Alternative
It’s been a while since I popped up a poem to the poems blog, so here goes a business Haiku I thought you might like. It is about involvement and engagement and perspective… Continue reading