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Home Archive for category "People" (Page 12)

“Make no little plans.”

Sometime around the last holiday season, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos announced a plan to home-deliver merchandise within 30 minutes of the order being placed . . . by a little helicopter drone.  That’s right.  He claims, when the system is ready some years in the future,  you’ll call Amazon, place your order, and 30 minutes

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Judge by results, not by effort or activities

It’s an easy trap to fall into.  We get seduced by a great work ethic.  “Look at Johnson over there . . . salt of the earth, I tell ya.  He’s in early, stays late, doesn’t complain, and you never find him goofing off.  I wish I had a hundred just like him.” Actually, no

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“I don’t care if people don’t like me as long as they respect me!”

Respect is a key element of leadership.  That is, it will be extremely difficult for a leader to lead without earning the respect of his or her followers.  Followers may do what the leader demands because they must in order to earn a paycheck, but their work will lack energy, and it will lack commitment. 

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“It’s best to be Attila the Hun every day rather than every other day.”

Consistency is a concept that gets a bad rap from time to time.  Playwrite and poet Oscar Wilde once wrote, “Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.”  Author Aldous Huxley was even more blunt when he said, “Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life.  The only completely consistent people are dead.”  So some

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Be a “winning workplace”

Comedian Jeff Foxworthy’s signature standup bit is, “You might be a redneck.”  It’s a whole series of if/then jokes aimed at helping you discover if you could possibly be a redneck.  For instance, “If you’ve been married three times and still have the same in-laws, you might be a redneck.”  Or, “If you own a

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WIIFM? Huh?

As human beings, we are all creatures of motivated self-interest.  That’s right, we are all egocentric.  Sounds pretty cynical, doesn’t it?  But it’s not.  It’s just the way we’re wired and the way we make decisions.  Should I do this or that?  Should I pick A or B?  Should I turn left or right, or

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eHarmony in the recruiting business? Really?

An article in the September 16, 2013 issue of Time magazine noted that eHarmony, the dating service, will begin offering a job-recruiting service sometime in 2014.  Seriously?? Apparently so. Not only that, but the article goes on to say that in addition to eHarmony, there are a bunch of startups who hope to use matchmaking

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“Trust is the glue of life.”

Trust is the bedrock of leadership.  While there are many other important aspects of sound leadership, trust is foundational.  Without it, nothing else matters.  Regardless of how charismatic a leader may be, without trust, he or she will have no followers.  And the reality is this: trust is very fragile.  It must be carefully built

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Learn to delegate

I’ve written about delegation before, but I continue to think about it because so many small business owners don’t do it very well. Entrepreneurs often like to pull all the significant levers in the business and push all the important buttons.  They built the business and know the critical parts of it better than anyone,

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Oh, and another thing (about showing initiative)

Our last posting talked about the oft-heard complaint, “Why doesn’t anyone ever show a little initiative around here?”  In it, we suggested that a company’s culture needs to make it “safe” for people to take some risks, be creative, and “show some initiative.”  We also noted that a company’s values, that collectively make up its

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