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
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
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
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
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
This relates to a blog I posted up about really lousy customer service from the Taylors’ Branch of the Greenville SC Library System. I was shocked at the extraordinarily tight security on checking… 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
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
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
Teams are powerful tools for implementing changes and improving workplace performance. Teams also impact leadership and can work for you or against you, depending on the organizational culture. Sometimes, it pays to simply… Continue reading
I was thinking about the future a while ago and realized that, for many, it arrived last year or even many years ago, in regards to how they deal with change. In picture… Continue reading
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
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
I saw Henri Bergson’s famous quote in an article on thinking and visioning and thought to illustrate the idea. Originally, he was thinking of this as a metaphor for thinking, but we know… Continue reading
Why not simply laugh at the antics of those people pushing and pulling a wagon on Square Wheels? It is simply so silly! What do you think they do things that way? If… Continue reading
This quote by Anatole France was shared on Twitter, so I thought to illustrate it with my Square Wheels One LEGO approach to how things really work. Your thoughts? It reminds me of… Continue reading
We tend to approach the workplace as a highly complicated interrelationship of hundreds of twisted systems, policies, procedures and programs. Just the thought of “how to motivate people” will make some managers cringe… Continue reading
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
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
Someone made a LinkedIn comment about innovation and improvement and I popped in a quip that I thought would be a good poster, so here we go: Continuous continuous improvement is a… Continue reading
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
Change is about considered alternatives, since you cannot make changes happen until there is a viable alternative to what you are doing now. Stepping back from the wagon is a way to generate… Continue reading
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
Another little haiku on the LEGO images and my theme of implementing round wheels on a Square Wheel wagon. The idea is that continuous improvement and intrinsic motivation come from people making small… Continue reading
I’ve been playing with line-art illustrations using Square Wheels since 1993 and have about 300 different cartoons that depict various aspects of how things really work. You can find out about those tools… Continue reading
“If you always do what you have always done, you will always get what you have always gotten…” This is an old quote I remember from my NLP training 20 years ago and… Continue reading
One of the things that becomes more and more apparent is that the metaphor of “Square Wheels” can be everyday language of performance improvement. Things that are “Square Wheels” are simply the things… Continue reading
I did 6 business haiku around Square Wheels and change and thought to pop one of them up here. I actually will put all 6 up as a poll to see which one… Continue reading
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
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
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
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
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
Yes, the Square Wheels do roll both forward and backward and just may be more useful than round wheels when descending very steep hills or for helicopters or cooking hot dogs. But for… Continue reading
What is it about caterpillars? Is it because they are so grounded? And what it is about the butterfly — why are they often so attractive? A lot of it seems to be… Continue reading
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
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
We often think of making structural changes to improve performance. Sometimes, that works. Sometimes, it just confuses things like working relationships, measurement systems, and the tools to get the job done may now… Continue reading
I’ve always liked our “Muscles” series, since they represent people who have improved their personal strengths through training and development (as opposed to through coaching and development, but what the heck, it IS… Continue reading
Yeah, sometimes things get rough and tough, and some people have had enough. Sometimes we could choose to do, something that might just be new. Round Wheels roll better than Square Ones, for… Continue reading
I have a series of cartoons that focus on reflecting about how things really are. There are 6 of them, each with the theme that you can possibly see new things if you… Continue reading
This little ditty popped into my head while I was thinking  of some conversations with my pal Lucy Freedman of Syntax. We share a background of NLP and similar behavioral approaches to improving… Continue reading
Steve Jobs — not much needs to be said about his influence on design and quality and making things the right way. Here is a quote about the motivation to make improvements and… Continue reading
A lot of people work hard every day. But sometimes we can also find a way to do things differently. There are often alternative choices. And there are two miles of ditch… Continue reading
…or, “A Desk is a Dangerous Place from Which to View The World!” Ideas are good, but not every idea is a good idea. And a desk is one of the places where… Continue reading
Engagement, innovative design, and teamwork go hand in hand for designing better products and services. Daniel Kahneman’s work on “Thinking Fast and Slow” clearly shows that different patterns of thinking will generate better… Continue reading
