Stop doing horrible 360s. Most 360s that I have encountered in organizations are poorly designed. They ask the reviewer to provide objective, holistic feedback on an individual. They ask things like, “Is this person a great coach and mentor…

A recent HBR articlebrought up the idea that leaders need to be able to transition from an “exercise of authority” mode to a “flat” mode. They claim data back this up, but the article doesn’t share the data that…

There are differences between how experts make decisions and how novices do. Gary Klein has studied decision-making, and his results have been somewhat counter-intuitive. (All of the quotes in this article are from his book Sources of Power) Before…

I have often said that as a manager, you aren’t responsible for having an answer to every question or making every decision. That doesn’t mean your expertise and experience don’t matter. They do, especially when you are mentoring others…

Every week or so, someone will post the Simon Sinek quote, “You don’t hire for skills. You hire for attitude. You can always teach skills.” The problem with this quote is that it assumes other people in the company…

A recent Twitter conversation inspired me with @edbatista to think more about searches and journeys. I started to come up with a typology of searches: In general, there are searches where you know what you are looking for in…

One of the hot fads right now is ecosystems. HBR went so far as to say, “Today’s CEOs Don’t Just Lead Companies. They Lead Ecosystems.” While the article is interesting in asking leaders to think about the interconnectedness of…

I recently completed a course on Critical Systems Theory with Michael C Jackson—author of Critical Systems Thinking and the Management of Complexity. In this course, over 8 weeks, we covered multiple systems-based approaches for handling technical, process, structural, organizational,…