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Untangling the Accountability, Systems, and Process Management Knot

Accountability is a mess in many organizations. Often good performers are put into bad processes within systems that subvert rather than support them. “The 85/15 Rule” emerged from decades of root cause analysis of service/quality breakdowns. This showed that roughly 85% of the time the failure is caused by the system, processes, structure, or practices […]

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Lip Sync: Does Your Video Match Your Audio?

Doesn’t it drive you nuts to watch a video where the lips don’t quite match the audio track? According to Vocabulary.com, “The verb sync, an abbreviation for “synchronize,” appeared in 1929 to describe the matching of sound and picture in the new ‘talkies.'” Some managers are badly out of sync. For example, a manager once […]

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Why Most Change Programs and Improvement Initiatives Fail

  I’ve just completed a two-day retreat with a fast-growing leadership team. They scored themselves at the lowest levels we’ve seen on our Team Dynamics Survey. Rarely do we see a leadership team as dysfunctional as this one. Their unique products and growing revenues were papering over many huge cracks and barely holding them together. […]

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Why Teams Often Don’t Work and How to Build Them

  A scout leader was trying to lift a fallen tree from the path. His pack gathered around to watch him struggle. “Are you using all your strength?” one of the scouts asked. “Yes!” was the exhausted and exasperated response. “No. You are not using all your strength,” the scout replied. “You haven’t asked us […]

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Win/Win: Workplace Well-Being Boosts Company-Well Being

  How would you score yourself on these questions: I am happy at work most of the time. My work has a clear sense of purpose. Overall, I am completely satisfied with my job. I feel stressed at work most of the time. How would people on your team or organization answer these questions? These […]

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Return to Office Mandates: Destroy Trust, Engagement, and Performance

  Decades of psychology experiments show strong links between our sense of control, well-being, and satisfaction. In a classic study by David Glass and Jerome Singer, people were subjected to loud bursts of random noise while they were given difficult puzzles to solve. One group was told they could press a button to shut off […]

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Realigning Systems to Serve and Support High Performance

  One of the root causes of our accountability mess is looking for who, not what went wrong. This leads to a search for the guilty as the cause of breakdowns in customer service, quality, communication, teamwork, and the like. It becomes a hunt to fix the blame more than fixing the problem. But those […]

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Are These Systems Serving or Subverting Organization Results?

As I wrote about the accountability mess, a good person in a bad system or process sets that them up for failure — and blame. “The 85/15 Rule” emerged from decades of root cause analysis of service/quality breakdowns. About 85% of the time the fault is caused by the system, processes, structure, or practices of […]

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What Accounts for the Accountability Mess?

  Accountability is highly subjective. Its meaning depends on whether we’re at the giving or receiving end. Many of us have been lashed with the accountability whip wielded by a blundering manager playing “gotcha games.” Often, accountability is a search for who to punish. The Blame Game and finger-pointing turns problem-solving and performance issues into […]

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Leading Question: Are You a Barrier Buster?

  I was interviewing a leadership team member to prepare for an offsite planning retreat. I asked about the biggest challenges facing their team. She wearily said it was their unfocused frantic pace of activity.  “We have lots of projects, goals, and priorities. We’re constantly making lists and setting action plans. But we seldom see […]

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Don’t Be an Ass in a Lyin’ Skin

  An Ass found a Lion’s skin left in the forest by a hunter. He dressed himself in it, and amused himself by hiding in a thicket and rushing out suddenly at the animals who passed that way. All took to their heels the moment they saw him.  The Ass was so pleased to see […]

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Love Radiates From the Depths of Our Spirit and Meaning

Valentine’s Day is the perfect time to reflect on the power of love and purpose. As mentioned in my top ten life lessons, I’ve written book chapters and about 200 blogs and articles about love. One of those, posted exactly 12 years ago on Valentine’s Day, was Love is at the Heart of Strong Leadership. Highly […]

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Working in our Dash: What’s the Meaning of It?

  “The Dash” is a poem written by Linda Ellis. In 1996, an announcer read her poem aloud on a syndicated radio show. This sparked a tsunami of response to Linda on how the poem touched their lives. The continuous outpouring of gratitude and stories inspired by the poem led Linda to eventually publish her […]

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Spirit and Meaning: At The Heart of Life and Leadership

Exercises such as my last post reflecting on key life lessons indicate our values and what’s most meaningful to us. It’s a timeless personal and leadership principle I call “spirit and meaning.” Spirit and meaning is a missing link in many lives, teams, and organizations. Many with material prosperity live in spiritual poverty. That’s what’s […]

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What Are the Most Important Lessons You’ve Learned in Life?

  There’s a quick and easy question! How would you answer it? Life lessons are one of 52 questions I’ve been asked weekly since my last birthday almost a year ago. That’s when our daughter, Jen, gifted me a subscription to Storyworth. The service is designed for older family members to answer a weekly question […]

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Earth Tones: We Need a Climate Change of Hope and Optimism

  “We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator,” said United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres at an international climate negotiations conference.   “A recent global survey asked 100,000 16- to 20-year-olds about their attitudes to climate change. More than three-quarters thought the future was frightening, and more than […]

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Protective Perspective: Don’t Be a Victim of the Doomsters Divers

How’s the world doing? Are we heading in the right direction? Should we look to this new year with dread or hope? How do you answer these questions: Is morality in decline? Are people less kind, less honest, and less good? Do we need to make America/Canada/The World great again? Are rates of violent/property crimes […]

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Renewal Claus: A Year-End Pause for Your Cause

  Santa can now relax after his big night. Hope the kids in your life aced their big performance review and rated highly on his naughty-nice scale. The Holidays are a good time for the pause that refreshes — even without drinking a little glass bottle of Coca-Cola as Santa did in those old commercials […]

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Enduring Life and Leadership Lessons from Ebenezer Scrooge

One of my holiday traditions is watching various movie versions of Charles Dickens’ much-loved classic, A Christmas Carol. Last weekend when two of our grandkids had a sleepover, we watched my favorite version, The Muppet Christmas Carol. To ensure a more restful sleep for all, we skipped over a few of the scarier, ghostly parts. When Les […]

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For the L of It: Living and Leading Above the Line

Too many appointed leaders sit on the line and wait rather than taking the initiative and stepping up to make things happen. They follow someone else’s lead. Some slip down below the line and wallow in hopelessness and pessimism — which they’ll often call “being realistic.” They may be called “leaders” by their position. But […]

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