Honduras Threads team hunts for a market for its luxury textiles More than 500 small, yellow sticky notes. That’s where the clues to the treasure were buried during the five-day, design thinking challenge in June. One by one the sticky notes went up on the wall the team created, each one containing an observation or an insight. One by one, …
Lost In A Snowstorm In The Alps
A small military unit was sent on a training mission to the Alps. They didn’t know the terrain well. No one had a map. Or so they thought. It began to snow. A blizzard. White out conditions. Big drifts everywhere. The men were lost. They were cold and hungry. Panic began to spread as they imagined what could become of …
Barking At The Troops: Leaders And Communication
Barking at the troops. Happens all the time. The boss wants to inspire his people, urge them to battle, lead them to victory. Coax them into making better widgets, sell more work, complete tasks on time and under budget. She goes from meeting to meeting, giving her ten-minute pep talks. He takes a few softball questions. She tells everybody to …
Leaders And Character: Know Thyself
To lead, know thyself. So it’s said over and over. And to know thyself means knowing your character. What’s your character? How do you describe it? For some, the answer seems easy. The descriptors roll off their tongues. To others it’s a struggle. A struggle because it can be hard to describe yourself at the very basic level of character. …
Effective Leaders Capture the Unused Ideas
Ever wonder what happened to the unused ideas germinated on the way to finding the solution to your project? Where did they go? Did anyone save them? Because experience shows there could be gold in those ideas. Keeping those unused ideas is the leader’s job. While a team is focused on narrowing down the number and scope of ideas in …
Is Top Down Falling Down? YES!
By Logan Monaco, MS Conbrio Associate Is top-down falling down? It is, the evidence shows. Slowly, but pervasively. Hierarchy is still the norm in many organizations. Diagram the structure and you have a pyramid. Levels of people are arranged into fixed teams. The responsibility for teams is the manager’s, the person who sits above them. Each of the levels supports …
Humans As Interchangeable Parts: A Look Into The Future
Humans are adept inventors. Our ability to make and repurpose the different elements of our environment to suit our needs has brought us a long way – from sparking two rocks together for fire to manned space flight. Creativity and innovation, it can be argued, have made our lives better. Interchangeable parts is one such innovation. Think autos, modular furniture …
To Know Millennials Is To Know What They Want
TO KNOW WHAT THEY WANT IS TO KNOW HOW TO DEVELOP AND KEEP THEM. How time flies! The older you get, the faster it flies. Here’s a milestone that whizzed by virtually unnoticed – especially by some more senior leaders. In 2015, a year ago, Millennials, people born between about 1980 and 1996, outnumbered Baby Boomers, who were born from …
Four Concepts for Running Your Organization
Where do you stand on the four concepts below for running your organization? More important, where do you want your organization to stand in the future? The concepts go to the heart of how organizations get things done… how they articulate purpose, mission, what they must do to reach goals, what goes in their annual plan, what competencies they need …
Toss More Tomatoes In The Tomato Soup?
Toss more tomatoes into the tomato soup? In this economy? Are you crazy? Most say they can’t afford to. Cutting expenses, downsizing workforces, putting the “soft stuff” on hold… that’s what they must do to hang on…despite the hurt those cuts will cause their organizations, cultures, processes, remaining people. They ask, what else can we do? Some say they can’t …