Have you ever noticed how much time and energy can be burned without actually accomplishing anything during the course of a day? Here’s my list of the top things that keep me from being truly productive. I suspect it will sound quite familiar to many of us, so I don’t claim any unique insight. I [...]
Tag Archives: Culture
Irreplaceable or Invaluable?
I was chatting with one of our key employees today. She indicated she was struggling with what she perceived to be a conflict of statements I have made to our company. On one hand, I tell our folks we want to hire the best, most capable people we can, and on the other hand I [...]
What Is Your Trust Formula?
I spent a number of years at Gemini Management Consulting. As you may know, selling consulting services is a significant challenge. In consulting the only thing you have to sell is your collective brainpower – no product to test, nothing tangible you can try out before you buy. This is a much more intangible sale than software [...]
Culture
Culture is that intangible which defines a company, distinguishes it, and makes it what it is. The best description of the importance of culture I have ever is Culture Eats Strategy for Lunch by Fast Company Expert Blogger Shawn Parr (January 24, 2012). I really wish I had written this blog because it gets the essence so [...]
The Secret to Success? Pattern Matching
For years I have worked with a wonderful assemblage of talent from a wide variety of fields, both inside and outside government. This includes venture capitalists, intelligence analysts, business analysts, and senior executives. The really good ones are able to ingest a lot of information quickly and iterate through it quickly to make decisions, more [...]
What You Can Learn From The Flying Karamozov’s
Ken Rosen, our VP of Marketing, introduced Chiliad to Randy Nelson, a former colleague of Ken from his days at Next. Randy may be one of the world’s leading experts on training. He also has a very intriguing personal history that I will let you discover for yourself. The title of this blog gives you a [...]
Big Rocks Rock Chiliad
I am sure many of you have heard the story of the professor who brought out a large glass jar from under his desk and asked the class whether the jar was full. He then proceeded to successively put in big rocks, then pebbles, then sand and finally water. Prior to adding each one he [...]
Decision Making in the Grey Areas
I was recently discussing decision making with one of my colleagues. He suggested there are two major classes of decisions that you need to be aware of: Decisions that one does not have the authority to make Decisions that one does have the authority to make This second category can be further broken down into two types: [...]
Open Yourself to Ideas – Plus, Minus, Interesting
When my mind gets too negative towards my own ideas, it’s unpleasant but tolerable. However, when my mind gets negative towards the ideas of others it can be a real liability, cutting me off from insight and creativity. At these times I like to turn to a technique called “plus-minus-interesting”. It comes from Edward deBono [...]
3 Rules of Thumb for Better Hiring
Evaluating and hiring people to join a company is a complex and maddening process that, even after many years, I confess I do not feel I have mastered. Here are some of the reasons why: Some people give great interview – “big hat, no cattle,” but their performance on the job is not exemplary; one of my [...]
