The pace of personal growth is directly related to the ability to apply lessons learned in one area of living to as many others as fitting and as time permits. These are the "aha" moments or personal victories, the magical moments where an area of limitation is overcoming, where frustration gives way to satisfaction. I've …
Tag: Management
The Spirit of Ownership
In my professional career I have noticed that there are two types of people: those who approach everything as owners and those who face their life’s work as hirelings. The former develop habits that make them ideal candidates for actual ownership and they also tend to position themselves in relation to the opportunities that come …
A Team of Stallions
I had the good pleasure of attending Cavalia's Odysseo in Atlanta yesterday evening and the performance was riveting! Our tickets came with a tour of the stables and an opportunity to ask questions of the show's Equestrian Director, Benjamin Aillaud, and my thoughts this morning center around an answer he gave to a member of …
Extraordinary Service
In a staff meeting today we considered the matter of extraordinary service. We're all familiar with bad service and we occasionally stumble across good service, but providers of extraordinary service are few and far between. In my experience, extraordinary service seems to come in part from extraordinary people who are given a safe space in …
Soft and Supple Will Prevail
My management team and I spent the the entire day yesterday with our Advisory Board. It was a powerful and constructive time and despite the short duration we managed to cover a good deal of useful ground. Many of their observations validated our assumptions, but the most instructive criticisms came, as expected, in areas that …
A New Corporate Culture
"We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately." ~ Benjamin Franklin One of the greatest challenges I've faced while developing a more desirable corporate culture that is free of the common impediments that creep in through the less illuminated corners of human nature lies in overcoming the entropic tendency …
Virtue
Benjamin Franklin lived an uncommon life. One of the Founding Fathers of the United States and a noted polymath, Franklin's inquisitiveness and inventiveness influenced American life and thought profoundly. Everywhere you turn you see evidence of Franklin's legacy: bifocals, the public library system, police departments, volunteer fire departments, the lightning rod, an incredible literary treasure …
Always be willing to be surprised
If there is one thing I've learned from both parenting children and managing people it is to always leave room to be surprised. Expect the unexpected and while you're at it, never fear the worst. While I would be the first to admit that people do tend to let themselves get into ruts of behavior, …
Talkin’ ’bout a revolution, wherever you go…
Just as the printing press transformed religion and the Western world in the mid-1400s, the internet is catalyzing massive changes in virtually every sphere of human activity. Medicine, science, politics, education, the arts and many other major cultural institutions are adjusting so quickly to the internet's democratizing influence that the heads of the old guard …
Continue reading Talkin’ ’bout a revolution, wherever you go…
Road Sign or Road Block?
As a follow up to my previous post on the matter of learning to work more effectively with others, Time to Think, I'd like to share a quote from the book of the same name, written by Nancy Kline. Ms. Kline described why it is so vitally important not to interrupt others while in a …
Gregory Hake 