Treat ideas like eggshells — if you’re not careful you will crush them before they hatch.
Ideas by their very nature are living organisms — many times growing and changing into something altogether different than planned. Most great ones mature on the backs of other ideas and don’t end up where they started.
For example, I can look down our street in Provo, Utah, and see three billion-dollar companies within 1,000 yards of each other. And I’ve been fortunate to watch these companies evolve. Interestingly, where they started isn’t where they’ve ended up at all.
Qualtrics began as online survey software tool developed strictly for academics for research purposes. Today, we’ve transitioned to a platform company with multiple products serving over 5,000 enterprise customers. Vivint, next door, started as a pest-control company and has ultimately developed into a home-security and automation and solar business. Ancestry.com was originally a publisher of genealogical books and magazines. (read more…)
One hundred and fifty years ago this summer, the Battle of Gettysburg turned from a potential Confederate victory to stunning defeat due to Gen. James Longstreet’s poor negotiating skills.
At the beginning of their classic, “Getting to Yes,” authors Roger Fisher and William Ury note that we are all negotiators, every single day. But most of us lack an actual method for negotiations.
In our daily work lives, we deal with colleagues more than folks on the outside, and it seems downright mercenary to approach our interactions with them as a negotiation. But what happens when we become convinced that a colleague or boss is taking the organization down the wrong path? How do we convince them to change their plan?
To bring this question alive, how might our world today be a different place had Longstreet been able to persuade his boss, Gen. Robert E. Lee, to rethink the attack we call Pickett’s Charge? (read more…)
There seems to be an innate drive to success that burns within us. If not, there are hundreds of images and announcements that extol the value of advancement. Videos and the Internet lure with the delights of riches.
People around us seem to slide into success. It looks so easy for them.
But what do you do when you find yourself treading water? What is the mud sucking at your feet and keeping you mired in one place?
Check these four reasons and find solutions.
1. You’ve lost your passion. We need to know where our passions and strengths lie and then work to advance them. When we blindly follow the upward path because everyone is doing it, we fizzle.
When trying to identify your passion, the easiest place to begin is to ask yourself: “What interests me and what are interests? Interests are those things that grab your attention ever so gently without you even noticing. (read more…)
Coaching your employees requires commitment. It must be planned in advance, not done off the cuff.
Management today is really about enabling people to succeed and that means providing them with the guidance, resources, feedback and support they need to do their jobs.
Coupling feedback with expectations is the foundation of manager-to-employee coaching. It’s also the method by which managers can help employees and teams get the work done and promote higher levels of engagement and productivity. (read more…)
Mentoring can be a difficult relationship to navigate for both mentors and mentees, but there are several steps that participants can take to ensure that they get the most out of the relationship. Finalists for Mentor Scout‘s Mentor of the Year award recently talked with Nobscot CEO Beth N. Carvin about some things to keep in mind when working on establishing a good mentoring relationship.
Mentoring is a two-way street
The mentor and the mentee each have responsibilities when it comes to building a good relationship. “My expectation is there is an open and trusting dialogue up front,” said UTC Aerospace Systems’ Samantha Stovall, recipient of the 2012 Mentor of the Year award. Stovall said she tried to set expectations up front and establish open communication right away with her mentee, Danielle Wilke. She said Wilke was expected to compile a list of her five- and 10-year goals, her strengths and weaknesses and professional issues she wanted to work on, while Stovall came up with exercises for Wilke to do and books for her to read. (read more…)
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