I have never been subjected to strict social constraints before. Born in the first part of the 1970s and having lived most of my life in Canadian cities, with a seven-year stint in Japan, my avoidance of draconian measures will not surprise, though such measures may be familiar to others…

Like a balloon with a slow leak, my early-career faith in leadership training began to wane with a “tales out of school” comment from a middle manager at a longstanding client. We had skills training to make messages more compelling. Note: This is always a really interesting topic area because…

Like a balloon with a slow leak, my early-career faith in communication training began to wane with a “tales out of school” comment from a middle manager at a client with whom I had worked very closely. We had completed communication skills training to make messages more compelling. Note: This…

My areas of professional practice is performance in collaborative environments and I will frequently invoke the combining of art and science. The tug between these factors is identified in Theodore Kinni’s review of Jerry Muller’s book The Tyranny of Metrics. …

Getting venture capital funding for your start-up (that probably is connected to technology) can be like boarding a train. Once aboard, the blinking signs all around convey the stark reality: Grow or die. And it is not just “growth,” but very clear expectations of the amount of growth expected. …

As a consultant, I am often asked to facilitate discussions and share insights. I recently had the very good fortune of being on the receiving end of some wise words. One piece of the discussion centred around generating and vetting ideas at a strategic level. Part of the joy of…

PRELIMINARY NOTE: I recall Karl Moore writing a similar article alluding to a story by Henry Mintzberg. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I hope both men feel flattered. I hope everyone else appreciates the relative locations of the tongue and the cheek in this piece. A group…

Corporate culture always offers room for improvement, so there is never a right or wrong time to evaluate and make changes. Predictably, we tend to think about making changes after an adverse event. Those changes take the form of initiatives that start as “great ideas.” I was recently privy to…

Evaluation is a big part of organizational performance: we are all familiar with how attention to the evaluation can draw focus away from actual performance. Stanford researchers gave us the famed marshmallow test whereby a preschool age child is asked to resist immediate gratification (e.g. don’t eat the marshmallow that…