Absolutely true. If you want to know where there is waste in your organization, ask your people. They know where it is, but they won’t tell you unless you ask. At a medical practice that has a number of offices, we asked the staff for “time wasters”. . . activities that take up a
“As managers, we have to get out of the behavior modification business.”
We can help people with skills . . . to improve old ones or learn new ones. But it’s just about impossible to change their behaviors in any meaningful way. Yet we continue to waste time trying. Take the example of Bill, ace IT guy. He’s an electronics genius. There isn’t anything with a circuit
“A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a joke or worried to death by a frown on the right person’s brow.”
Bruce Lund is the owner/founder of Lund and Company Innovation, a toy design and product invention company (inventors of Tickle Me Elmo). His company is dedicated to the proposition that toys are profoundly important. Great toys teach, entertain, surprise, inspire and invite inquiry. Mr. Lund wrote this blog and I thought it was so good,
“The nicest thing about not planning is that failure always comes as a complete surprise and is not preceded by a period of worry and desperation.”
Many small business owners do not engage in any real, substantive planning activities, even though planning will do more to move the business forward than anything else they can do. This is often because: a) they are so busy putting out the fires of today that they don’t have time to worry about tomorrow, or
