Portrait of Medieval Dirty Face Warrior with chain mail armour and red cross on sword. Cloud smoke on Dark Background

Battle Stations: 4 Reasons You Must Do the Hated Planning

I'm pretty sure most of us missed the Crusades … and know very little of medieval warfare.While battle strategy in that era appears to be random and haphazard, certainly in most movies depicting that period, planning invariably eclipsed brute force. Strategy proved to be the touchpoint for success in every battle, including the ones we’re…

Portrait of Medieval Dirty Face Warrior with chain mail armour and red cross on sword. Cloud smoke on Dark Background

Do You Have a Battle Strategy – or is Hope your only Strategy?

I'm pretty sure most of us missed the Crusades … and know very little of medieval warfare. W hile battle strategy in that era appears to be random and haphazard, certainly in most movies depicting that period, planning invariably eclipsed brute force. Strategy proved to be the touchpoint for success in every battle, including the…

Have You Created a Battle Plan – or is Hope your only Strategy?

Most of us weren't around during World War II ... but D-Day was the largest amphibious invasion of all time.It involved over 250,000 troops and 15,000 ships landing along a 50-mile stretch of the Normandy coast on June 6, 1944.Luck?Accident? ... or the result of rigorous strategic planning and project…

12 Holiday Morsels to Strengthen Your Business

Yes, the holidays are here and already the list of things to do continues to grow – completing the annual budget, planning parties, visiting with friends, figuring out what to get who for when … and so it goes.Yet, my spirit remains strong, so I’ve prepared a menu of 12…

Jessica Long. One of the most decorated Paralympic athletes in history.

The 7 Qualities You Need to Get Your Company on the Medal Stand

What does it take to get on the Medal Stand and out of the Grandstands? She's won 17 Olympic medals. 12 of them are gold. She holds 13 world records. She's been Sports Woman of the Year twice. She's obviously a remarkable swimmer. She did all of it after having…

The 12 Pains of Christmas

You can certainly sing this! The 12 Pains of Christmas

The holidays are here and we’re still trying to figure out how we’re going to get it all done. So, instead of asking you to work at something – anything – I’ve decided to give you a gift of holiday music. Elmo did it, so did Ren & Stimpy, Winnie…

7 Attributes to Tell if Your Organization is Getting Clobbered

Leadership | The 7 Attributes of World Class Organizations

What can you accomplish in a flash of time?

It lasts about 300 to 400 milliseconds. It occurs about 10 to 20 times per minute.

Over the course of a day, excluding about 8 hours of sleep, it amounts to about an hour and 20 minutes on average, a fair chunk of time in our waking day.

If you consider that the universe is about 14 billion years old, about 54,000 years would pass by during any given span of those milliseconds.

Some might argue that we can’t see anything during that period.

Yes, all that happens in the blink of an eye … about 1/3 of a second.

It ain’t much but in those small fractions, a lot can occur.

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Leadership | Innovation & Growth | Congratulations to 2 North Bay Leaders

This week, two North Bay organizations deserve a round of applause!Amy's Kitchen opens an on-site health care clinicFirst, congratulations to Amy's kitchen for its innovative approach to employee health care. They recently opened a primary health care clinic at their Santa Rosa production facility.[pullquote]From time to time, we offer a round…

Leadership Lessons | Are Incentives the Cornerstone of Life?

Does your incentive program REALLY drive performance?

You probably know someone, don’t you, who is a star performer who believes that her achievements go unrewarded?
If so, you probably also know an underachiever who gets more than he deserves.I
s there any greater disincentive to the high performer than knowing that under-performance seems to be equally rewarded?

Should there be a moratorium on bonuses?

I’ve talked about the value of incentives before, but it keeps coming to mind as I talk to senior executives who don’t seem to have spent any time at all considering whether their incentive plans are working as intended … or whether they need to be revised.
In some ways, it reminds me of the comment that Bloomberg attributed to Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, during the $20 billion bonus scandals during the 2008-2009 financial meltdown.
According to Bloomberg, this was his comment … (more…)