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: engagement
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A Business Planning Square Wheels Haiku
The seasons change and we need to be individually and collectively prepared. But are we preparing with the right approach? Consider: One might think that a collective approach involving the participants might generate,… Continue reading
Team Implementation Square Wheels Haiku
A simply haiku about people and performance, teamwork and collaboration. For the FUN of It! Dr. Scott Simmerman is a designer of team building games and organization improvement tools. Managing Partner of Performance Management Company since… 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
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
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
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
Haiku on Teamwork and Engagement
People make choices. Why not give them a chance to look at how things are working and then look to what might be done to implement improvement. And some positive Disruptive Engagement would… 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
Santa Rocks
And Santa rolls now, more than he rocked before. You can see that those Square Wheels are being replaced by some round ones… For the FUN of It! Dr. Scott Simmerman is a designer… Continue reading
Poem on Performance Leadership and Innovation
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
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
On Negative Thoughts and Negative Engagement
While Donald Trump did not originally say this, I think that most people could believe that he did or could. The quote seems to be congruent with his management style. He is not… Continue reading
Square Wheels and Rock and Roll!
Terry Lee was over here and we were listening to songs while we are painting my den and he mentioned Uriah Heep and one of my favorite songs is “July Morning.” So, I… 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
On Listening – A Poster for Thinking
The idea of, “Ask and Ye Shall Receive” should be familiar to most readers. A short article in Workforce by the CEO of a survey company (Michael Papay) said that a listening culture… Continue reading
Impressions and Customer Service
I am trying to find a new vendor and it has been wild as the franchisees of this organization continue to fail to respond to me in a way so that I would… Continue reading
Business Haiku: On Leading People, a Square Wheels thought of the day
Leadership. Much of it is about involving and engaging people in workplace improvement, which impacts performance, makes people feel appreciated if their ideas contribute to things, and which is motivating. But organizations can… Continue reading
Reflection, Innovation and Engagement
We tend to make understanding the workplace and people a really difficult and complex endeavor. Sure, there are lots of differences and we can cull out themes of leadership and innovation and creativity… Continue reading
Dr. Seuss-style Poem on Engagement and Motivation
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
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
Thoughts on Teamwork and Alignment
I want to keep these thoughts simple, since we tend to make everything more complicated than it needs to be. Occam’s Razor is useful! So much research continues to support the reality that… 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
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
Zen Koan on Workplace Engagement and Leadership
I just thought that this might anchor to some thoughts about behavioral alternatives and leadership and engagement and some workplace issues like motivation and innovation. Ya think? (grin) My belief and my experience… 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
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
Listening? Awareness of its impacts is awakening
My friend Gary Loper shared the fact that we are fast approaching International Listening Month, which is March. Gary is going to be hosting a chat on the subject here and I thought… 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
Destiny, Teamwork, and Making Sense of Things
I was thinking about teamwork and how it tends to integrate with company culture while I was looking at some old powerpoint slides of quotes. I thought to polish up this one and… 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
Moron Teambuilding: A Great Video
I popped onto my pal Michael Cardus’ blog and found this animated 2-minute video that is about teambuilding. For me, it hit a lot of the “high” notes about what is wrong with… 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
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
What Leaders DO – expressed in Square Wheels and LEGO
We often discuss themes of leadership, and there are just so many complicated models and detailed books that go after the explanation of what the best leaders do differently than the average ones… Continue reading
Dr. Seuss-Style Thanksgiving Poem on Thinking and Being Great
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
A Poem on Thanksgiving Communications and Success
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
Business Haiku – Innovation through Conversation
Thought that this was a cute little ditty to spin up: Hope that all things go well. More of these to come. For the FUN of It! Dr. Scott Simmerman is a designer of… Continue reading
Mechanistic Operations: What’s wrong with THAT picture?
I am re-reading Gareth Morgan’s book on Images of Organizations (1986) and some of his writings on the mechanistic approaches to organizational design got me to think about how things work using my… Continue reading
Motivation, Peer Support and Engagement – A LEGO Poster
My son Jeff had a great idea and simply illustrated it. He was reading one of my earlier blog posts on the workplace and group involvement and gave me the punchline that appears… 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
Square Wheels LEGO Dr. Seuss Poem on Leadership
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
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
Quip – On motivating and engaging people
For many years, I have used this quote to remind people that engagement is an active and involving process. You cannot motivate people who are just not engaged. And you should look at… 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
Don’t Think about Innovation. Don’t think about Elephants.
Look at this simple illustration about how things work and don’t think about innovation: Don’t think about process improvement possibilities. Don’t think about issues of engagement and involvement. Don’t think about what might… Continue reading
A Square Wheels LEGO Haiku on Fear and Change
It is funny how one thought leads into another. After designing the LEGO haiku I posted up a bit ago, another framework came to mind as I was thinking of these same issues… Continue reading