Accountability and responsibility often get used interchangeably, but they’re not the same thing. Accountability is external. It’s one-directional. “Do this by Friday at five.” It carries the tone of command and control, assuming people won’t follow through unless pressure is applied. Responsibility is internal. It’s bi-directional and collaborative. “I make a commitment to …
The One Thing Approach
Ambitious teams always have more ideas than time. Which is why most growing companies aren’t suffering from a lack of opportunity – they’re drowning in good intentions. There are initiatives in flight, decisions on hold, backlogs full of projects, and an endless stream of “urgent-but-not-important” requests. The Cost of Too Much in Motion When …
Deadlines vs ‘Dreadlines’
A deadline comes from planning. A ‘dreadline’ comes from panic. Jason Fried and David Hansson, co-founders of 37signals, coined the term in their book “It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work,” and it’s a useful lens for understanding why projects often feel chaotic even when teams are working hard. What ‘Dreadlines’ Look Like Dreadlines …
Personality Assessments
Personality Assessments: Helpful or Unhelpful For Hiring Are personality assessments an effective hiring filter? In the late 1990s, personality assessments entered the corporate hiring scene with a compelling pitch: decode how people naturally operate, match them to the right roles, and reduce mismatches and turnover. Tools like Myers-Briggs and DiSC, promised to turn instinctive …
Capacity Building
Leadership Minute: Building a Business that Builds People Want to know how one company hit 30% annual growth — every year —for a decade? Robert Glazer’s company, Acceleration …
Reducing the Noise
Leadership Minute: Calm the Noise and Help the Team Refocus The constant stream of notifications, pings, emails, and last-minute requests is draining team productivity. And it’s not just hitting goals taking the hit — focus and decision quality suffer too. The study In Search of Lost Focus by The Economist points out how digital overload …
Keeping Decision Velocity High
“The project’s delayed, deadlines are moving targets, the goal line is shifting, we’re falling further and further behind. Something has to change.” Sound familiar? The culprit? Too often it’s poorly defined feedback loops, delayed reviews, slow approvals, indecisiveness, and paralysis by analysis that bogs down projects. Add-in the classic “too many cooks in the kitchen” and …
Slowing Down to Speed Up
Escaping the “Too Many Projects, Not Enough Time” Dilemma Ever feel like you’re working on everything but getting nothing done? Deadlines slip, costs balloon, and projects linger in a weird limbo of being almost finished but never actually done. Welcome to the mile-wide, inch-deep syndrome – where teams and individuals stretch themselves too thin, making …
Teamwork Unlocked: The Quest To Build The Perfect Team
Back in 2012, Google’s Project Aristotle set out to crack the code on what makes for an effective team. Over a two-year period, the company studied 50 years of academic research, 180 teams worldwide and 250 different attributes across each team. This led to a focus on how teams can function as a unit, rather …
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The Feedback Fix: Better Conversations, Stronger Teams
Feedback: everyone needs it, yet few are skilled at it. Unclear, poorly timed feedback is a recipe for confusion, frustration, and project delays and failure. Let’s face it – comments like “This isn’t quite there yet” or “Can you make it pop?” aren’t exactly helpful. Vague and ambiguous feedback often leaves teams confused and demoralized …
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