As an amateur boat builder, I acquired many woodworking practices that were so simple, so logical, and so easy to understand BUT they are not that obvious to the uninitiated. As a novice, someone had to tell me first. Then, a small voice inside my head said duhhh. Who hasn’t heard the old
Blissful Ignorance Read More »
Q: Are your decisions CREATING or PREVENTING resistance to change? How would you know? ♦ A business is a system—a network of functions and their connections. ♦ In order for a system to have integrity, it must be designed and built according to its purpose; it’s raison d’être. ♦ System INTEGRITY indicates alignment between the
RESISTANCE TO CHANGE Read More »
Wanna know why certain problems linger, persist, and keep coming back—why they seem to be without solution? Well: ❶ They are systemic in nature—i.e. they are inherent to your decisions regarding the business system’s design, structure/organization, implementation/operation, maintenance, and management. ❷ The solutions you choose only address the problems symptoms or effects. ❸ You haven’t
Whack-a-Mole Problems Read More »
“I can resist everything except temptation” is a quote from Oscar Wild’s Victorian-era comedy of manners titled Lady Windermere’s Fan: A Play about a Good Woman. Who can resist temptation when finding oneself in the tool section of a home improvement center? Every tool, from the simplest scribing tool to advanced digital or laser guided
The Solution Depot Phenomenon Read More »
Pounding your fist on the desk and demanding to get some answers might make you look tough, but is this demeanor helping or hindering getting you what you want? Pounding fists on desks is a sure sign of frustration, which is typical of leaders who are confronted with challenges that linger, persist, and keep coming
So, You Want Some Answers Huh . . . ? Read More »
My pet peeve is with management consultants and leadership coaches who regurgitate the K.I.S.S. principle at nauseam, advocating to keep things simple. Simple sounds good―as opposed to complex, difficult, or hard. However, the solutions they propose for solving systemic problems tend to be unrealistically simple, or simplistic. The following quote, attributed to Albert Einstein,
Military Grand Strategy for Business Leaders Read More »