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
Category Archive: leadership
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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
Perfectionism: Some Square Wheels Thinking
An acquaintance shared that she will be presenting on TV about “perfectionism.” It is actually something I know very little about, even though a lot of people seem to think that I am… 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
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
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
Workplace Happiness – The World
My friends in Hong Kong at CSG just sent me some research reports from their membership with the WIN / Gallup International global research network that I thought to pass along. I see… 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
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
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
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
The Boss, Thinking and Missing; A Dr. Seuss style poem
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
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
Greatness and Leadership – Inspiring and Motivating
The basic quote is this one: Good leaders push and drive and move forward, while special ones engage, collaborate and inspire others to greatness. The idea is that doing hard work by oneself… 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
Peter Drucker Quote and a LEGO Square Wheels post on Management
I saw this in my image files and realize I had not popped it into anything so, here we go. It was going to appear in a longer blog on thinking about management… 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
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
Think Working Hard is Making Progress?
I was always told that hard work would generate success. But a simple look around the real world will show one how silly that statement is. It is NOT simply about hard work;… 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
Poster on Making Progress and Innovation in the workplace
Using LEGO and my Square Wheels main cartoon, I offer up this little Dr. Seuss – type poem for your viewing enjoyment. Improvement is about involvement and engagement of the team, and teambuilding… Continue reading
Trust and Isolation – Not Building Teams
There are often issues of isolation in how things work in most organizations. Wagon pullers are naturally isolated from the hands-on reality of the wagon pushers, but some are also simply too distant… Continue reading
Trust is the Residue of Promises Fulfilled – A LEGO Poster
Frank Navran used this quote 20+ years ago and I have used it ever since: Trust is the residue of promises fulfilled. I think it is really memorable and reinforces the reality that… 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
Strategy – Connecting The Vision with The Reality
Disconnects are just so common when it comes to people and performance. And when it comes to implementing strategy, the research says that few initiatives meet the goals and expectations of the senior… 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
ISOLATION – A Square Wheels LEGO Poster on Motivation
The idea for this came up from a comment 15 years ago from one of the senior managers of the Hong Kong Civil Service, where I showed the basic Square Wheels One wagon… 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
Teamwork – a LEGO poster about results
Thought you might like my spoof on the performance posters, so here is one that focuses on TEAMWORK, with the related idea that it should be about organizational improvement and communications and all… Continue reading
Boss, Can I have a second of your time? A Square Wheels LEGO thought on innovation and motivation
What do you think the reaction will be to this request? Consideration? Engagement? Or are we just too busy doing things the same way we have always done things… Who has the time… Continue reading
Don’t Just DO Something. Stand There! (A Square Wheels Lego Business Quote)
I got two other business quotes up in this blog today, both using the Square Wheels LEGO version of my main cartoon so I thought to add one more… This is an oft-used… Continue reading
Chaos, Teamwork and Structure – Issues of Alignment
Let me illustrate my thinking on issues of corporate performance, innovation, teamwork and the basic issue of alignment, since I think that some people get this wrong. Let me take a really simple… Continue reading
Lego People talk for Engagement and Teamwork
My new associate, Hakan Forss, has been designing LEGO® scenarios and now a few other people seem to be jumping into the mix. He and I have been talking since he first published… Continue reading
Teamwork – and Giving Birth to Baby Elephants
I write a lot about teams and teamwork and am completing a blog post on my main blog about teamwork and implementation — basically, it takes two to three years to effectively implement… Continue reading
A Slideshare package on Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine for teambuilding
Apologies for this miss-aligned and non-poetic post but I wanted to share the information that a new slideshare program on our team building game for collaboration and alignment was uploaded a few minutes… Continue reading
Teamwork, Leadership and Resistance to Change
Not always do leaders embrace change and improvement. Consider the case where the team finally begins to get things rolling downhill. This one is the basic theme of my series on, Nobody Ever… Continue reading
Winter of Despair and a Hope for Spring – Illustrated Haiku by Scott Simmerman
This is not technically a haiku in structure, but I am hoping that it illustrates a good learning point about despair and possibilities that already exist. Note that the round wheels are already… Continue reading
Thoughts on DE-motivation – Kaboom!
Every so often, it just reaches a point where the Pin finally hits the balloon. People can sometimes have a pretty good tolerance for crappy stuff, but everyone also has a threshold. When… Continue reading
Thought on Business: Teamwork – How things really work (Leaders)
My last blog quote post of today — this is number 5. We talk leadership all the time and there are thousands or tens of thousands of books about the issue. SO much… Continue reading
Thought on Business – Thinking Like a Leader of Teamwork
I just read the start of a discussion in one of my LinkedIn groups called, “Think Like a Leader” and which references an HBR video by Daniel Goleman, who I really like and… Continue reading
Square Wheels Poem on Performance – Nothing is NOT
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
Daylight Savings Haiku – Five of Six
The “Go” for “Green” continue with number 5 of our 6 Spring Forward business haiku featuring Square Wheels One. What are your reactions to this one: Not just springing forward but making The… Continue reading
Daylight Savings Haiku – One of Six
Do you like the basic idea? A winter of work with no possibility of a Spring Forward. Can we really continue to do the same things the same way? Click on the image… Continue reading
Business Haiku – Some Square Wheels One illustrations
It is just so easy to do haiku with the image of the Square Wheels wagon, since it generates so many irrational thoughts about the reality of the journey, the difficulty of the… Continue reading