Insights

The COVID-19 virus has radically changed day-to-day life for individuals, businesses, and governments around the world.

The daily question on everyone’s mind is “when do we get back to normal?” Organizations are asking “how do we prepare to get back to normal?”

 

These should not be the only questions for you as a leader.

Once you have safeguarded lives and stabilized operations, your priority is also to think about future improvement. Your key question should be the opposite of others who are focusing on “normal.” Your question is: “which of the changes we’ve made are worth keeping, and what further improvements can we make?”

This article helps you do that: to “innovate forward” rather than “revert backward.”

[Read more…] about Waiting to get back to “normal”? Innovate forward instead of reverting backward!

Relentless change and complexity make success difficult. Radical events like the current pandemic make things worse.

Those conditions guarantee that we aren’t guaranteed to know what to do.

So what do you do if you don’t know what to do?

 

[Read more…] about Remote work: what to do when you don’t know what to do

Maybe, but often not for everyone.

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Why?

First, if everyone else are doing the “best practices,” you will have no differentiation.

Second, if best practices are picked off a menu, or worse yet, different menus, you are likely to end up with what a client CEO called “a dog’s dinner” … a hash of not very appetizing stuff to us. And quite possibly stuff that really doesn’t work well together or at all, or not for your situation, making things worse.

Third, read this LinkedIn post by colleague Tom Meloche:

[Read more…] about Are “best practices” really best?

Note:  I am reposting this from 2017, amid current fears about COVID-19 coronavirus and a possible pandemic, financial market gyrations, continuing terrorism, escalating political dramas, locust swarms in Africa, and so on.  The message remains the same, even as it did in 2017 with the then-update of a post after the 9/11 attacks.

Terrorism, war, and acts of hate have a grip on our consciousness these days.  Media, including movies and books, capitalize on our fears and add to them by projecting visions of future evil.  Worries mount.

Fear stifles innovation and agility.

We must know how to keep our fears manageable.  Otherwise, we will unnecessarily retreat from life … personal, and business.

Fear is good!

Have you seen the movie “Wall Street”? If so, you may now be thinking of the scene when character Gordon Gecko pronounces “greed is good” to shareholders.

The problem with Gecko’s statement, and mine of “fear is good!,” is that the qualifiers are missing. A desire to improve one’s condition can lead to good things, and fear can lead to good things. The key in both cases is to avoid the downside.

And no more so than in current times.

Here are some changes in thinking and concrete actions that will help you manage your fears.

[Read more…] about “The Only Thing We Have to Fear is …”

A fundamental formula for business agility and success in general is quite simple.

Simple enough that third grade sports teams can understand … and I know, because I have used it in coaching them … yet powerful enough for business.

Here it is:

[Read more…] about A Simple Formula for Success