Do you consider yourself a leader in your field? Are you a leader disguised a follower? Is your boss getting in your way of leading and undermining your abilities to lead? Doesn’t just thinking about this make you mad? The upheaval our world is experiencing is making leadership opportunities more available to more people who might not have thought they could take the reigns and make an impact. Could that be you? I’ve worked with young clients who went from frustrated retail clerks to being in strong, thought leader positions because of the things they just knew how to do — and of course their willingness to get out there and try some new things, meet new people and ultimately package themselves and their skills in a compelling way. Don’t just get mad. Get going! Now’s the time for new people and to create opportunity for themselves; for those… Read More
bored at work
How do you eat an elephant?
As I sit here with my 12 year old helping him to study for his Humanities final I am bored and interested…and inspired to re-read an article I clipped a couple of weeks ago. I loved the May 12th issue of The New Yorker. Chock full of interesting articles about innovation. One article, by James Surowiecki, really grabbed me: ‘The Open Secret of Success’. It made me think of the riddle about how to eat an elephant: one bite at a time. In Surowieki’s article he discusses Toyota’s approach to innovation…they implement a million new ideas a year — small process oriented ideas. What I thought was particularly interesting was that he states, parenthetically, that ‘Japanese companies get a hundred times as many suggestions from their workers as U.S. companies do.’ Why is that? Are our companies not willing to hear ideas from workers? Are US workers not looking for… Read More
