MentorWords

Fight or flight syndrome leaves out an important – and destructive – third reaction. Freeze. Are you doing the business equivalent of the suicidal bunny routine?

The advice “do what you love and the money will come” is accurate – as long as what you love to do and what you are very very good at are the same thing. This article explores the value of placing your compensation bets on your most marketable talents.

The egotistical marketer designs for his or her own pleasure, and any communication that is done solely for the self is just another form of self-abuse (to use a polite – if somewhat Catholic – euphemism). If nobody else is actually involved, then it stands to reason that nobody else actually feels anything.

The young lady entered the conference room at the behest of the VP of Product Development. She presented herself well, from her perfect business suit to her direct communication style. As the VP launched into a description of the new product – an application designed to serve industrial toxicology analysts – the impressive young lady [...]

One of the challenges small business owners face is going up against larger competitors with more resources at their disposal. Not just capital – though competing against highly funded corporations is certainly daunting. But people resources and all of the ideas, creativity, organization, and administration that employees provide. I’m acutely aware of this right now, [...]

People respect responsibility and authority when they are appropriately demonstrated. When a business leader spends all his or her time saying, “well, what do you think?” “Maybe we should let an ad hoc address this,” or “I think the answer will present it self if we have the right discussion with the right parties present,” those are not the messages the people hear. What they hear is, “I don’t know,” and “I’m hoping an ad hoc will bail my ass out,” and “I’m hoping that if we get more people together you won’t find out that I don’t know.” Even if that leader means to be collaborative and show respect for the opinions of others, the result is that they’re being indecisive and wasting time.

I was speaker at a luncheon last week and the topic was the relationship between motivation and innovation. Afterward, one of the attendees asked if I thought today’s high levels of work stress are reducing our ability to be creative and motivated at work. It’s a completely valid question. As I visit client sites and [...]

One of the most difficult things a manager will ever undertake to understand is how to motivate people. The field of industrial psychology has entire subfields dedicated to this topic, as do the fields of education and of course, general psychology. Motivation is an important concept, and it’s worthy of a lot of study. But [...]

If you’ve ever eaten lemon meringue pie (it helps if you enjoyed it, but it’s not essential), the following thought should make some sense to you. It’s even better if you’ve made lemon meringue pie, but I think I can get the non-pie-bakers past the lack of experience. Over the years, colleagues and I have [...]

Having a successful business isn’t just about doing more of what we do well, or doing what we do well even better – it’s about finding out what we should be doing. Now I know there are a bunch of brilliant geniuses out there who can pull this information out of their um, ear, but [...]