Tag Archives: Change Management

“I Know You Just Love My Idea!”

I get really excited when a new idea somehow gets into my head. It may not be original thought, as some of our ideas have been waiting around for millennia or a chance to germinate. Some died an earlier life where circumstances may have starved it. Some were just bad ideas. But when I think I’ve got a good one, I get charged up and stay up all night trying to give it legs.

I always want others to like it and in some way, feed my ego. I have wanted it a lot, so I did not push hard on others to tell me why they did not like it, or seek skeptics for hard-to-take feedback. I’ve been lucky to have learned that my approach was dumb-dumb. My first question should have been, is this worth my time? Then, should I pursue this idea and invest in it? Do I have an understanding of the nature of constraints and obstacles I will need to resolve and overcome? At what point in my development process do certain questions and answers belong? Can I objectively differentiate opportunity from stubbornness or obsession? It’s not nearly as bad as those (in the field of megalomania) who exhibit the attitude with others that, “You just don’t get it. Why can’t you see I’m right all the time?” If we’re lucky, Darwin is taking care of some those guys.

I confess that I find the questions may be to easier ask and more difficult to answer.
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The Perfect Storm

Our customers make us better! Have you heard that phrase? When I have, the translation that emerges is that our customers sometimes have to drag us into improvement. In fact, it often means that we become aware of the needs to improve from feedback and complaints. Someone might argue that we sometimes innovate from negative feedback
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Francis Bacon, Top Guns, and the Breakfast of Champions

It’s time for breakfast. I’m having a bowl of OODA Loops, a true Breakfast of Champions. Want some?

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“The Summer of 69”

It was the summer of 1969, a hot, balmy Miami midsummer night, and I was between high school graduation and my first quarter at college. For me, the summer of 69 represented a big transition from the euphoria and fun …
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“If I Had a Hammer, I Would Hammer in the Morning, …”

“To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”  This quote is attributed to Mark Twain (and a few others, including Abraham Maslow).  When I first heard the phrase, it was also quoted as a Japanese proverb and …
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More Gossip

Our last discussion was about the game “Gossip” and the calamities resembling the Tower of Babel and the language disconnects that impact our enterprises. In that initial article, I mentioned that we might need a Rosetta stone as a tool …
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“No, It’s Not What You’re Wearing”

Years ago, many years ago, I had the good fortune of learning how to approach performance improvement from several of the giants. It happened while I was part of a life-changing and game-changing journey at Florida Power and Light in …
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You Can’t Go Back To Somewhere You’ve Never Been To

My first car was a beautiful 1956 Oldsmobile; I bought it in 1968, during the early half of my senior year in high school. It increased my degrees of freedom and mobility. No more having to catch rides with my …
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Harmony and Dissonance

The YinYang has been a powerful framework for me when endeavoring to frame and evaluate what are ahead, my decisions. The importance of considering the duality of opposing, mutually defining forces or dimensions, as fundamental to evaluating completeness, is very thought provoking. …
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