Category: Best Practices - Challenged!

Time to retire the carrot and stick

School teachers and administrators are cheating to gin up the scores of their students on standardized tests.  So reported the New York Times last week.

The reaction to this story more

Sustaining the Motivation to Excel

I got pushback yesterday on a presentation I did on motivation.  I was challenging sacred cows, and a number of the business people present didn’t like it.

My central message:  more

The Power of Listening

If you’ve ever attended a management training, you’ve been told you have to listen well if you want to manage well. Still, it’s one of the hardest things for leaders to do. After all, our leadership culture more

Vision: The Commitment Factor

“I call for all leaders to awaken and plan for the future with hope and creativity.”

Jim Hessler, my business partner, wrote those words in his blog post this week.  There’s more power in them than you might recognize.  He was discussing strategic planning in a depressing time … but he was really talking about so much more … more

The Myth of the Open Door

In the business world, certain ideas take hold in people’s minds perpetually. These axioms are taken as true without questioning, in part because they are repeated so often by so many people. more