Goals define what you want to have, not what you want to become. Goals are, however, targets that help us immensely in moving from a general vision to a specific set of priorities and actions.
Read article »Reputation is what people think I am. Personality is what I seem to be. Character is what I really am. Our goal should be to blur the lines between the three until they are one and the same. That means living life from the inside out.
Read article »Thinking about death can produce a passion for life. Once defined, the determination to live out your personal purpose and dreams can be a strong personal motivator.
Read article »To clarify our core values, we need to develop a comprehensive list of all our possible values, rank their importance and concentrate our improvement efforts.
Read article »A key test of whether core values are alive and real in an organization is to ask team members at random to recite those values. If they can't do it without referring to a piece of paper, there are either too many values or they aren't being used in daily operations
Read article »Tyler Hayden approached Jim with an offer to contribute to his book ‘A Father’s Message In a Bottle’ . In short, the book has letters from Fathers to their children on assorted topics but each contains a nugget of wisdom and love.
Read article »
There are countless personal and leadership development books full of jargon, fads, and buzzwords flooding the market. A bestseller, this is a book of “profound simplicity” that cuts to the essence, while being easy and fun to read. Although highly applicable to readers of Jim’s previous bestselling books with roles and titles like manager, supervisor, or executive, Growing the Distance is written for a much broader audience.
View book/ebook/CD »A few months ago I posted a blog on “What’s Your Me/We Ratio? based on a salient observation made by Donald Cooper in his newsletter about managers’ use of “I” and “my,” rather than “we” and “our.” They seem to live by the American pop music star Madonna’s creed: “everyone is entitled to my opinion.” […]
Read post »Happy New Year!! May this be your best one yet! The start of a new year is an excellent time to renew and refocus ourselves, our teams, and our organizations. It’s an essential part of centering or grounding ourselves. In The Tao of Leadership: Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching Adapted for a New Age, John […]
Read post »I don’t recall how this Native American fable ended up in my database: A native brave came upon an eagle’s egg which had somehow fallen unbroken from an eagle’s nest. Unable to find the nest, the brave put the egg in the nest of a prairie chicken where it was hatched by the brooding mother […]
Read post »A reader responded to my December “Tips and Techniques for Reviewing, Assessing, Celebrating, and Refocusing” blog with this comment: “Hi Jim, Just like to echo your thoughts on staying focused on successes. For many it has been a tricky year in our global economy. Focused thinking has never been so important. Focus your thinking on […]
Read post »A web site visitor described an all too common occurrence today: Our company treats firings and layoff exactly the same. The person being laid off or fired is called to the HR department, given their pink slip, escorted back to their station with an HR person, a hand truck , and boxes. Thirty minutes later […]
Read post »