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
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
I’m going to be completing a complete redo of our Coaching Tools toolkit soon, one that embeds a series of our LEGO® Square Wheels® scenes and themes. So, I thought to warm up… Continue reading
Spectator Sheep express themselves with Naaaaaa’s and Baaaaaa’s when asked about things in the workplace. They are most certainly not involved and engaged and they are often not moving in the same direction… Continue reading
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
Thought you might like this simple view: Managing people and performance IS a juggling act, and there are always things that can be improved. But there are also number of factors that simply… 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
The dynamic balance of collaboration and competition exists in most organizations, with the reality being that some teams are collaborative and some teams are competitive and some teams are a bit of both.… 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
How do we value ourselves and our contribution to the team? It is a reasonable question that each of us need to ask every day. Note that your personal contributions to your team… 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
Ah, The Slackers! Let’s put the blame on the people for not being motivated, right? After all, the workplace itself must be motivating since at least one of our people seems motivated every… Continue reading
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
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
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
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
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
I thought you might like this one: We are constantly talking about motivation and leadership and how to involve and engage people, to empower them and to generate improved performance. But there must… 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
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
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
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
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
I am not sure how to illustrate this, but I thought to post it. And, to have a visual, I will post up three of my Dumpster posters… It was shared with me… 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
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
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
How about this for how things really work in some organizations? The Square Wheels Project is our new online training program to support supervisors in their efforts to motivate and engage their people… 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
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
