What is it about human nature that makes us want to bite the hook of negativity? I recently worked on an initiative that “everyone” loved – meaning the majority vastly outweighed the minority by 20:1. With a few rare exceptions, [...]
Cars need a tune-up every now and then. Knowing this, most of us invest in maintaining our cars to keep them running smoothly and at optimum performance, often saving us money on expensive repairs further down the line. So why [...]
Can you easily describe your corporate culture? Is it a high-performance, positive place to work? What words would you use to describe the culture of your organization? If those questions are challenging to answer or the words that come to [...]
Collaboration is a relative term. Lots of people work together, but that doesn’t mean that they are working collaboratively. When a group works in true collaboration by agreeing that the potential outcome outweighs any one person’s opinion, then sparks of [...]
Almost every time I lead a collaborative strategic planning workshop, I experience how human behaviour can both help and hurt the collaboration process. This time it was around brainstorming and idea generation. Ideas are meant to be building blocks that [...]
This just in… Healthy conflict is NOT an oxymoron. It’s real and it’s achievable. In fact, healthy conflict can be dynamic, motivating and even exhilarating. But our old school notion of conflict can indeed be something to fear, or at [...]
By now you may have heard the awful truth. Multi-tasking is a lie. It does not make us more productive, more get-it-all-done, more “Oprah-esque.” Multi-tasking makes us idiots. Yup, multi-tasking can lower our I.Q.s by up to 30 points. I [...]
Change is essential. Change is inevitable. Change is the only constant, yadayada. While there are many truisms when it comes to change, this is the one that really matters: change makes people uncomfortable and often fearful — not a state that [...]
If you’re old enough to remember the inter-office memo, imagine if we managed memos the way most of us manage email. We’d need avalanche safety ratings in the office due to the piles and piles of paper we would amass [...]
As a proud Irish Canadian, in celebration of St. Patrick’s Day I thought I’d share some Irish wisdom for the workplace. I can hear the Irish reading this say, “Irish wisdom in the workplace? Sure, isn’t that an oxymoron?” I [...]