August 2017 Update: Oh my, was I wrong. Wow. === I am looking forward to the New Year as 2016 was not the best of years for the world. The US elections were difficult and left most people angry for one reason or another. If you watch the cable news, it seems the world is heading to hell in a handbasket. The over saturation and exaggerations by the media is depressing. With that being said, I hope and pray that…
I feel as if there is a significant volume of works adoring, in a sense, and vilifying the scarcity mentality in our culture. I was fist exposed to these concepts by Brené Brown, and I was challenged by her first TED talk. Personally, I was inspired and motivated for the longest time by the “greed is good” mantra. I felt the constant longing for more was a staircase that drove us to higher levels of personal and professional development. Life…
Opinions are a form of judgment that require people to perform a decision-making process. In reality, these decisions are often supported by the thinnest levels of credible information and rational thought. Formation of these ideas is based loosely on questionable facts and flashy headlines. We can see evidence of this from the world of high politics to the simplest of daily conversations. Decision-making is highly influenced by people’s internal scripts, biases, and cognitive maps and frames that allow for mental shortcuts in information…
I am a strong advocate for the power of key performance indicators (KPIs). These indicators help guide and focus departments, act as leverage when requesting resources, and provide insight when diagnosing trends before they become significant problems. They apply as much to a personal level of accountability as they do for a department or company. I am re-reading Andy Grove’s book, High Output Management, and he has an excellent chapter covering KPI concepts. In chapter 2, there are many pearls…