Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Being a Quitter

Vince Lombardi said, “Winners never quit and quitters never win.”

I don’t always agree with Vince.

Winners know how to quit the right things...such as being lazy, such as doing things that are not advancing learning and improvement, such as things that take focus away from their most important objectives.

I am a firm believer that our “stop doing” list should be longer than our “to do” list. If we stop doing the things that don’t matter in the larger scheme of things, we will have more time to do the things that do.

It is certainly time for me to reexamine my day to day tasks.

Winners quit all the time…they quit the things that make them losers.

Saturday, September 11, 2010

A Couple of Quick Observations

Last week I called for a 10-15 minute conference call with the leadership team of one of my clients. I wanted to discuss and refine the draft agenda I had prepared for their strategic planning day to be held at the end of the following week. It was a short but interesting and spirited telephone discussion. It hit me after the call that the development of a good agenda had actually removed some of the need to discuss in detail a few of my suggested topics.

Observation: developing a good agenda may remove the need for a meeting altogether...or at the very least, make the meeting more effective.(In short…a little planning goes a long way!)

Also during the call I brought up some operational measurements that I thought would be interesting to track and monitor for any trends. That sparked a debate about what to measure.

Observation: deciding what to measure is sometimes just as important as the measurement itself.

Still learning…pretty cool.

Monday, September 6, 2010

Filling in the Blanks

When in a decision making mode sometimes we don’t have all of the facts about a situation. At this point most of us simply “fill in the blanks” with something…and sometimes that something is pure fiction.

Always, always, always attempt to get the facts, or at least as many as you can, prior to making the final call. By this simple action you will save yourself lots of heartburn, heartache, and maybe even heartbreak.