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
There is good teambuilding and then there is the other stuff, the things that you regret having even seen, much less participated in. Among other things, the difference is in what the event… 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
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
Ah, the caterpillar and the Butterfly. It is so much about potential. Can you mentor and coach your caterpillars to become more than what they are now? For the FUN of It! Dr. Scott… 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
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
Well, if you did not get the gist of this posting from the title, you should get it quickly as you look at the first image. Well? I did not really know where… Continue reading
In some organizations, Boss spelled backwards is self-explanatory – they are not interested in the involvement or engagement of their people, and thus motivation suffers greatly, with all sorts of negative side effects… 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
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
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
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
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
I am in a new LinkedIn group and the question came up about a simple abstract about a long article that I posted up to Pulse about government employees and motivation. You can… Continue reading
Organizational alignment and shared goals and expectations are a critical factor in optimizing organizational performance. This is true whether you think about “interdepartment collaboration” — generally an oxymoron in most organizations — or… Continue reading
Here is a Thankgiving Haiku on sustaining workplace communications and success and about teamwork and team innovation. I hope you like it. Clicking on the image will take you to a whole big… Continue reading
It is Thanksgiving, and we need to take personal responsibility for the choices we make and what happens. So, maybe you can find a use for this little quote / poem from my… Continue reading
Learning. You have a choice and you cannot simply depend on others to control your destiny or your progress forward. Consider: Ya think? You can always vote with your feet if they simply… Continue reading
We tend to make understanding the workplace and people a really difficult and complex endeavor. Sure, there are lots of differences and we can cull out themes of leadership and innovation and creativity… 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 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
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
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
I want to keep these thoughts simple, since we tend to make everything more complicated than it needs to be. Occam’s Razor is useful! So much research continues to support the reality that… Continue reading
For the past 20 years, I have been playing with the theme of managing and leading change. One reality is that you cannot push change onto someone else. In that way, it is… Continue reading
My friend Kevin Eikenberry tweeted today that, “Persistence matters for matters of personal achievement and leadership.” Since I had just posted a picture blog of Perfectionism in this poems and quips blog, I… Continue reading
We spend a LOT of money on marketing, generally defined as the effort to attract new customers and retain new customers. But the reality is that we spend a LOT of that money… 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
I am a big believer in continuous continuous improvement and workplace innovation driven by people who have their hands on the wagon and know what is not working smoothly. Innovation does not always… Continue reading
Some 25 years ago, Randy Ranslaben gave me a name for one of the original line-art Square Wheels illustrations. He called it, “Wheel Time Twaining” and it looks like this: The idea was… Continue reading
We often find that change is resisted. I’ve written extensively on this in my regular blog posts, like this one on “The Reality of Change, Innovation and Employee Engagement,” and this one on… Continue reading
