Real Corporate Change Takes the Six I’s
Let’s be honest, corporate change is difficult, really difficult. Whether a start-up experiencing growing pains, a company faced with increased competition, a floundering company trying to stay afloat, or a successful business attempting to expand into global markets, the path toward change can often be unclear at best and the barriers can seem insurmountable at worst. Yet change your company must if it is going to become or remain a “player” in its market. The question isn’t whether your business must change; that is a given if you want it to survive and thrive. Rather, the question is: Will our company change? If you answer in the affirmative, there are two more questions that you must ask. First, what will your company change? In the ever-morphing marketplace, there isn’t always clarity on what needs to be changed for a company to stay competitive. Second, how specifically will your company change? It’s one thing to have grand ideas about what changes your company needs to make. It’s an entirely different thing to take those “50,000 feet” ideas and bring them down to Earth. Though change is always complex, like all complicated processes, it begins with a basic framework that orients and guides the course of transformation. A useful way of framing this process is by what The Trium Group calls “the Six I’s”: intention, inspiration, information, insight, integration, and implementation.
Read MoreParenting: Is Technology Making Your Children Mindless Instead of Mindful?
I’m no Zen master and I don’t expect you to teach your children to meditate all day. At the same time, the notion of mindfulness has much broader meaning than as an Eastern philosophy or for practitioners of Buddhism. In fact, it has tremendous significance for your children growing up in this crazy new world […]
Read MoreBusiness: Build a Positive and High-performing Corporate Culture
Because business is a “team sport,” considerable attention must be paid to the influence that the team as a whole has on its members and, inversely, the impact of its members on the team at large in terms of relationships, collaboration, and, ultimately, performance and productivity. How important is it to build a positive and high-performing team? Well, have you ever been on a “downer” team? I’m talking about one that is permeated with negativity, unhealthy communication, competition, and conflict? It sure doesn’t feel good and it can definitely interfere with the satisfaction and performance of its individual members. How about a team that isn’t highly motivated? It’s certainly difficult to stay motivated yourself. In my role as a partner at The Trium Group, a boutique corporate consulting firm based in San Francisco, I consult extensively in the corporate world where I help executives and companies to maximize individual and team performance. One of the most important areas I focus on in this work involves helping senior management to create a culture in their company that is positive and high performing, resulting in maximum individual and organizational performance.
Read MoreSki Racing: Mikaela Shiffrin is a Star On-Snow and a Real Person Off
Great article about the 17-year-old alpine ski racing star Mikaela Shiffrin in the NY Times today. Worth a read to learn about the wonderful attitude and humility she has about ski racing.
Read MoreIs Raising Good Decision Makers Parents’ Greatest Challenge?
Good decision making is one of the most powerful skills your children need to learn to as they progress through childhood and transition into adulthood. But I promise you, it is not a skill that will develop readily on its own, particularly in the digital world in which they are growing up. You should teach your children why popular culture and technology can cause them to make poor decisions and guide them in learning how to make good decisions. Making bad decisions. Whenever I speak to a group of young people, I ask how many of them have ever made a bad decision. With complete unanimity and considerable enthusiasm, they all raise their hands. When I then ask whether they will ever make a poor decision in the future, the response is equally fervent. I also ask children why they make less-than-stellar decisions. Their responses include I didn’t stop to think; It seemed like fun at the time; I was bored; Peer pressure; I didn’t consider the consequences; To get back at my parents. Yet when I ask them if the faulty decision was worth it, most usually say, “Not really.” What this means is that there was glitch in their decision-making “program,” somewhere between input, processing, and output, that caused the bad decision. Because children lack experience and perspective, and, as I noted above in my previous post, their prefrontal cortex isn’t fully developed, they tend to make decisions that are egocentric, rash, and short-sighted. This absence of forethought can cause children to not consider all available information, engage in an incomplete cost-benefit analysis, and ignore long-term consequences.
Read MoreCycling: Five Keys to Cycling Confidence
Confidence is a deep, lasting, and resilient belief in your ability to ride your best and achieve your cycling goals. Confidence keeps you positive, motivated, intense, focused, and emotionally in control when you need it most, whether on a long and grueling climb or when you’re trying to reel in a breakaway with only a […]
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