Daylight Savings Haiku – Two of Six
Here is another business haiku about Daylight Savings Time from the brown side of things: Similar to post One, this one supports that we continue to work through the haze of work. Can… Continue reading
Category Archive: motivation
0 Comments
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
On Possibilities and Reframing
Here is access to a pdf file that contains some of my ideas on involving and engaging people for improving workplace performance. I wrote it up as a guest blog for a friend… Continue reading
More Thoughts on Intrinsic Motivation – a poem
That first little cute poem led me to making a bigger longer and maybe better poem around people, performance, innovation and improvement. So, we have something that looks like this: Innovation comes from… Continue reading
Thoughts on Intrinsic Motivation – a poem
Here is a cute one about motivation that comes from continuous improvement: Sure can be fun out there! See our toolkit on Manager as Motivator, a Square Wheels-based training package For the FUN… Continue reading
The Moose Joke – The best session closing story of Scott Simmerman
This is not a poem or a quip but it is the best closing storyline out there for a workshop. I say this after attending a whole big bunch of sessions for training… Continue reading
Positively Positive Potential Performance – A Square Wheels Model
By stepping back from the wagon, we can see things differently. If we can get the team to step back and look for issues and opportunities, they will see these. They can then… Continue reading
Intrinsic Motivation – Business Haiku and Square Wheels
Here are two nice haiku around the issue of the value of making changes to improve your workplace and the gratification that comes from making such changes. DO note that the change may… Continue reading
Intrinsic Motivation
It is easy to motivate me. Just let me stop pushing and see. The wheels can roll smoothly and fast if we can just kick the boss in the (back) The ideas are… Continue reading
More Better Faster: Square Wheels, Round Wheels and Intrinsic Motivation
We roll forward. Thumping and bumping. But then, things stop and we all gather to share issues and ideas and thoughts about what we might do differently. The result is that we choose… Continue reading
Business Haiku – the fun continues…
With the thought in mind that a few people see my poems as somewhat negative, as they frame this in their own thinking and project onto the cartoons, let me offer up a… Continue reading
Business Haiku – Square Wheels and Customer Service
I commonly and often say, “The Square Wheels are everywhere…” when it comes to happenings around customer service. Example from yesterday: I called my insurance company and asked for a report to be… Continue reading
Business Haiku with Square Wheels – The Journey Forward
Making progress in any initiative is taking steps forward. Often, it is about working with others and being led on the journey. One often needs peer support, good systems and processes to manage… Continue reading
Business Haiku – A New Day of Possibilities
It’s the dawn of a new day and one arises thinking that new ways of getting things done just might be possible: And we all know the importance of communicating about ideas for… 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
The View at the Front of the Wagon – a Business Haiku
The Square Wheels wagon rolls forward. Not smoothly, but it rolls… There are all sorts of issues and frameworks and anchors to how things really work, but this one should help explain a… Continue reading
Business Haiku – Two cartoons on teamwork
Teams and teamwork and team building. A pretty funny thing that seems so simple but that involves so many bits and pieces. Teams want to form naturally. Put a group of four or… Continue reading
Business Haiku – The Rat Cage of Working
It IS a rat race at times, although one seldom hears those words these days. Rat Race. Guess it is partly because people don’t watch rats race much any more and horses and… Continue reading
50 Feet Farther than Last Year – a poem
Here is another ditty about work and working, along with connections to how I use the metaphor of 50 feet along with the telling of my Moose Joke: My Moose Joke uses this… Continue reading
Puppies. Square Wheels and Intrinsic Motivation to Implement Improvement
Let’s make improvements to how things work. Why? Because it would impact the puppies, of course. and this one is similar to this one: Yeah, we CAN improve the rolling forward of the… Continue reading
Puppies and Performance
Okay – the basic and simple question is this: Would people care more about improving how the wagon rolls if the cargo were a load of cute puppies? Inquiring minds want a discussion… Continue reading
Change and Improvement – a poem on butterflies
Creating butterflies in your workplace would seem to be a lot better than simply supporting the lifestyle of the caterpillars. The related thought is that caterpillars are a lot easier to manage. Is… Continue reading
People and Potential – Releasing the Butterfly
So many of our interactions with others in our daily management could focus on potential. Most of us have that ability to be more than what we are if we only felt more… Continue reading
Caterpillars and Butterflies and Change and Potential
For the past few weeks, I have been playing with my illustrations and pictures and the themes of managing and leading change and improvement. So much of it has to do with unrealized… Continue reading
Caterpillars can fly – a quote by Scott Simmerman
One of my most favorite quotes about change, visions, potential and style: Managers can fly more better faster if they just look at their styles and see the opportunities for better involvement and… Continue reading
Square Wheels – Dream to Fly
This is about people and performance, about dreaming of possibilities and it is about the reality of improvement. Dream to Fly! For the FUN of It! Dr. Scott Simmerman is a designer of… Continue reading
Choices, Teamwork and Destiny
I was reading some quotes and saw a quote by Emerson that I thought to reframe around teamwork and the choices we make. Again, I will anchor it to my Square Wheels model… Continue reading
Making the Workplace FUN!
Motivation and engagement are two critical factors for workplace improvement. So, I ask you, “What’s wrong with this picture of how things really work in most organizations?” What choice have probably been made… Continue reading
On Progress and Improvement – Issues of Choice
On the theme of: “Don’t Just DO Something, Stand There!” we have this kind of thought about choice and choices: So much depends on simply seeing what are called “considered alternatives” instead of… Continue reading
Santa deals with un-engaged and demotivated reindeer.
Every year, Joan does some kind of Christmas Poem around Santa and Square Wheels or Lost Dutchman and this year is no different. It seems like Santa is getting older and losing it… Continue reading
Nobody Ever Washes a Rental Car – Ownership and Involvement
I got to looking at some stuff on “empowerment” within the past hour. One was about an “empower camp” where they claim that by attending the camp, kids will leave with, well, empowerment… Continue reading
The Basic Reality of People and Performance – An illustration
I read a Zig Ziglar quote “Expect the best. Prepare for the worst. Capitalize on what comes.” and it got me thinking that I can do something similar with the cartoons. So, I… Continue reading
Trust. Leadership. Engagement. Three Illustrations that demonstrate the issues…
As I continue playing with the main design aspects of my new teambuilding game framed up on the theme of trust, three illustrations just seemed to appear, so I took the time to… Continue reading
Mining Gold and Collaboration – A poem and a followup question
I continue playing with the bigger powerpoint file and the creation of poems and questions for followup in Lost Dutchman team building game and around the Square Wheels illustrations. As my friend and colleague… Continue reading
Thanksgiving Day Poems on Performance and Teamwork
It was suggested to me to expand my illustration and poem collection to add some followup poems on performance and teamwork around the notion of Turkey Day and Thanksgiving, so I have been… Continue reading
Followup is the key to improving teamwork and results – a poem
The Jeep causes teams to creep. But discovery of a Turbocharger allows that jeep to go twice as fast / twice as far. Turbos are best practices that enable people to dramatically improve… Continue reading
Celebration is a key, to involving them and me: A poem about motivation and success
It is about having fun, playing with new ideas, and then anchoring those new ideas to commitments for improvement. So, people Celebrating Success is an obvious key. It builds spirit and allows for… Continue reading
The Chaos of Implementing Strategy
My associate Robin Speculand just sent me an email with some factoidal stuff and some of his really solid ideas on implementing strategy. You can find his website here. I thought that a… Continue reading
Teamwork and Decision Making — a poem on performance
Teamwork is about groups of people making shared decisions and working together to implement solutions to shared problems. In our Lost Dutchman team building exercise, teams get resources to manage and decisions to make… Continue reading
Reflecting on Results; Looking for Improvements: Two Illustrations
Reflection is a primary way to identify new ideas and opportunities. Too often we continue to do things the same way expecting things to change. One of my favorite quotes is from the… Continue reading
Chaos and Confusion are normal parts of organizational change
After delivering a team building session, things can be rather confused as you may have discussed those things that are not working well and need to be improved but you have not yet… Continue reading
Getting the Boots Aligned, in the Rain, in the Main
Our team building exercise, The Search for The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine, is about generating and benefitting measurably from collaboration and alignment. When people share information and resources, the entire group optimizes its… Continue reading
Dealing with Mud – Improving teamwork with focused discussions
In our Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine game, one of the metaphors is mud, that gooey stuff that makes progress difficult. In the exercise, it is a factor that costs a team extra fuel… Continue reading
What Have We Done Differently? Post-Team Building Followup
We need good tools to generate more behavioral change following our team building efforts. For this, I am starting to build a whole library of illustrations, poems and questions that can be email… Continue reading
Don’t Just DO Something, Stand There: the poem
Don’t Just DO Something. That just gives you the same old thing, day after day. Stop. Step Back. And Stand There! Take a real look at what is happening and what COULD be… Continue reading
THE Award for Common Leadership – The Christopher Columbus Award for Discovery
I have always thought this funny since the idea was first shared with me 30+ years ago: The Christopher Columbus Award. So, I had my artist, Roy Sabean, draw up something, which I… Continue reading
Mission Statement Definition and Value – Thoughts from Dilbert
This was one of those Statements of Truth that I read in “The Dilbert Principles,” a book by Scott Adams. Can you say this anyways better? All good companies have one. Yep.… Continue reading
Changing Fear to Fun – The Key
Many people have fears. I show that here as the Fear of Change from my Square Wheels illustrations on workplace improvement. They are afraid of what the Wave of Change will do… Continue reading
Activity is NOT Progress or improvement
Sometimes, we get so focused on rushing and running around that we lose sight of the reality that things can be improved. Here is a little ditty on just that: Racing to the… Continue reading
The Roads We Take – Poem Three on Profitability
This is the third of the ditties on Overpass and the issue of alignment and making progress. Hope you like it: It IS confusing out there and making the right choices is… Continue reading