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
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Business Haiku on Anger and Ideas for Improvement
Finally, enough was enough and the performers found that the pin had actually HIT the balloon and all things went “POP!” That happens, you know. But I guess the good news is that… Continue reading
Business Haiku on Mentoring and Transformation
The painter sees a different reality than what presently exists. It is a caterpillar no longer in thought. You can read a LOT more about Teaching the Caterpillar to Fly by clicking on… Continue reading
Square Wheels Haiku – Thoughts and an image on Improvement
I started doing a whole big bunch of haiku poems for business process improvement. This is one of the first. I’m having fun with these. And if you want to embellish or improve,… Continue reading
In The Beginning – A Classic on Missions and Visions
At least 25 years ago, I came across this. Never did see a source. But it is an obvious classic insofar as how it describes how things really work in large organizations. I… Continue reading
On Speaking with Conviction – a funny bit from Taylor Mali
My friend Lisa Marshall passed this along in an email and I thought it was really well done. Taylor Mali talking about, well, like, you know… Click on and watch this 3-minute video… 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
The Chaos of Strategy Implementation, a poem
My colleagues talking about strategy implementation got me thinking about how I often see the reality of cascading a strategy from the top down through the levels of management to implement new ideas… 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
Poems about Puppies, Square Wheels and Performance Improvement
I continue to play with the puppies. They are just such cute things. But the linking of puppies back to the performance improvement of the pushers and puller continues to be a difficult… 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
Square Wheels DO Roll!
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
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
It is a Butterfly yet?
So much of our life is about potential, both having it as well as helping others achieve theirs. As part of that, here is another post on the theme of caterpillars and butterflies… 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
Square Wheels, Caterpillars and Butterflies — It is about the flight!
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
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
Butterflies and Change – A Quote about Less and More
This is about potential. After all, caterpillars do make the transition to butterflies and it is about potential. It is also about accepting change and becoming more and better. Change is what we… 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
Don’t Just DO Something, Stand There!
I posted up a comment on a magazine article about a friend’s blog and it reminded me of a cartoon and a poem that I have not used in a while. The issue… 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
Thanksgiving and teamwork, poems and cartoons
I put up a series of cartoons and text, taking some screenshots as well as leaving them in modifiable form. You can download them for free and either use my screenshots or customize… 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
It’s about Mining as much GOLD as WE Can – Collaboration and Results
The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine game has the theme of mining gold, and we put the tabletops into the context of collaboration with slides that talk about “WE” — but what teams hear… Continue reading
Teamwork, Communications and Planning – two more poems about work
The “team communications” and agreement cartoon in the boxes below is one that we use a good bit in the debriefing of The Search for The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine, since it has… 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
Lean and Mean – a poem on performance and competition
Teams need to “cross the desert” and get to the Mine where they can find the Gold. This is the metaphor of The Search for The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine and also a… 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
Being a Big (Square) Wheeler – a poem on Teamwork
Much of the play of our Lost Dutchman team building game is about managing resources so that the team’s vehicle can make it to and from the mine with as much Gold as… Continue reading
Poem on Organizational Alignment, Chaos and Reality
We often use these “View from the Top” illustrations to show how things might or should look and how they really look. We have a dozen or so illustrations from the Square Wheels… Continue reading
Poem on Teamwork and Collaboration
This is one of the little ditties that rolls out of our Lost Dutchman game, where the goal is to Mine as much Gold as WE can! ALL of us can do better… Continue reading
The Christopher Columbus Award – for “leadership”
Christopher Columbus — there is a lot of controversy over the man and his accomplishments and how history is representing things. Supposedly, nearly everyone knew that the world was not flat in the… 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