How can we impact workplace performance? Perspective and Teamwork. The consideration of New Possibilities. Active engagement and active involvement with innovation. Implementation, (at last in many cases). And continuous continuous improvement. Captured in… Continue reading
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
There is a lot of background around this new poster, and a few different versions of things. But the basic idea is about how ideas are handled. Here, a person (an outsider, an… Continue reading
A reality is that ALL of us know more than ANY of us, and we are often blind to new ideas because we are so invested and embedded in the old paradigms. Sometimes,… Continue reading
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Understanding the Lay of the Land is important, and also the reality of the journey forward. If all you do is pull, all you will see is forward. And while that might have… Continue reading
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
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
My friend Brian Remer posted up a blog on creativity and used a metaphor of bicycle riding and showed a brain with a bike. Cute. And it got me to send him back… Continue reading
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
We working hard to illustrate a big bunch of things from my Square Wheels themes and quotes collections and to build a lot of scenes into my Lost Dutchman team building game. But,… Continue reading
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
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
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
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
Not sure that Leonardo had the Square Wheels wagon specifically in mind when he said this, but maybe… For the FUN of It! Dr. Scott Simmerman is a designer of team building games and organization… Continue reading
“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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Sometimes, you really need someone to challenge the group think in order to identify something that can be done differently to make improvements in how things really work. So, DON’T JUST DO SOMETHING,… Continue reading
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
I uploaded this as a high res image, simply because I could! It is one of the spectacular day lilies from my garden. Fabulous stuff. And you can get fabulous ideas from the… Continue reading
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
Not published much in a while but LOTS of new haiku and similar things needing to be uploaded. Here are three in my LEGO Square Wheels® series about “the weeks at hand” and… Continue reading
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
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
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
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 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
Motivation comes from involvement and engagement and from allowing people to generate ideas for improvement. In The Square Wheels Project LMS, we gives supervisors tools to improve their facilitation skills. Fast. Easy /… Continue reading
Here is one on motivation gained through the facilitation of ideas by a supervisor. How can we improve the Facilitation Skills of the supervisors? Check out The Square Wheels Project, our online training… Continue reading
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
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
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
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
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
