In most organizations there is a hierarchy of management. Performance of the entire organization is directly correlated to the effectiveness of this hierarchy in leading, making decisions, distributing work, and solving complex problems. In our organization management distributes performance based bonuses, adjusts salaries and promotes people to new responsibilities yearly. This year the process has been different from prior years because of different management.
Let us assume Jane the director is responsible for two managers Bob and Joe who in turn are responsible for ten employees each. Mary the top performing …

Around eight years ago when we were in St. Thomas on vacation, I wrote down the following values. I had just finished a book about Benjamin Franklin and felt it was important to have my own values down on paper just as he had his. They are as relevant today as they were then. I would add a few more sentences now but we’ll leave that for another post.
Family & Love
Love your family, friends, neighbors, & others. Build trust & spend time with your family. Love thy neighbor. A strong …

“A wise man makes his own decisions, an ignorant one follows the public opinion.” ~ Chinese Proverb
What could be so hard about making decisions? I hope you are one of those rare people who are able to make quick and sound decisions all the time. This ability, I believe, is almost as unique as having a gift for playing a musical instrument or one for creating sculptures.
The rest of us struggle with making decisions for many reasons. We are afraid we might hurt others. We think too much about every …

While working on the house over the past weekend, I remembered my childhood. I was around 11 years old. My father and I were building a house together. We had already built the foundation and were working on the walls. He was the master building the walls and I was the helper mixing cement and giving him stones and anything else he needed. In those days, we had tools that were made to sell but not to last. The hammer looked very nice but after a few nails, the head …

Understanding the type of change is critical for determining how to execute the change. You can look at everything as a form of change. As I type this post, I’m changing the World Wide Web (albeit in a minor way), I’m possibly impacting the thinking of a reader (or at least I hope I am) and the reader may subsequently take actions that positively impact others. Is your new project going to change the world? Is your product going to put your competition out of business or is it going …