Skills 2.0

the dirty secret behind empowerment

Aman Motwane — Sat, 09 Aug 2014 17:18:50 +0000

Empowerment, as it’s practiced in most companies, can be boiled down to 9 words —

“I empower you to do this (but not that).”

This makes it crystal clear that the boss still retains the power, that the boss will still monitor and control.

This is empowerment in name only.

It leads to frustration and disillusionment for the bosses because they invest a lot of time carving out the details of how they will “empower” — but the results never show up. There’s no jump in innovation. There’s no boost in productivity.

Meanwhile, employees silently watch the continued erosion of their dignity. They see empowerment as an increased burden when they should be feeling liberated.

It’s painful to watch.

The best managers don’t monitor and control. They groom and grow. To them, empowerment is not a practice. It is not an initiative. Rather, it’s a natural by-product of how they groom and grow.

Instead of wasting your time defining the rules for empowerment, invest that time growing your employees. Teach them what questions to ask themselves, what issues to consider, how to think independently. Have conversations about the context of your organization. In this way, demonstrate to them that you truly value them, that you truly trust them to make good judgments.

Of course, this is way, way beyond what’s traditionally called empowerment. It’s also infinitely easier and infinitely more effective. Plus, employee engagement and motivation are other natural by-products.

Time to move your org up to Skills 2.0 — or stay home.

who do you turn to when you need answers?

Aman Motwane — Sat, 02 Feb 2013 10:04:37 +0000

At home or at work, who is the person to whom you’re most likely to turn when you need practical answers or solutions?

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You may not be conscious of it, but the person you turn to would almost never be an individual who gets lost in intellectual analyses.

If you need a speedy, real-world solution, you would seek out an individual adept at sifting through the noise, cutting to the chase, and helping you pinpoint an answer that’s both realistic and workable.

In other words, you would seek an individual who sees the world in a way most people don’t.

Isn’t that true?

Now, ask yourself this:

How does one become such a person — the type of individual whom others seek out whenever they need realistic, practical answers?

You can’t become such a person by learning and memorizing all the possible answers in the world. There are just too many answers for even a thousand individuals to memorize in a thousand lifetimes.

The only way to become such a person is to learn to ask yourself the right questions.

The whole world is learning answers. But to become wise — that rare individual adept at cutting to the chase — you must learn to ask yourself the right questions.

As the number of answers available in the world grows exponentially, the ability to ask the right questions is becoming exponentially more important. Time to step up to Skills 2.0.

Aman Motwane

Stop learning the answers others teach you.
Instead, start learning the questions others used
to figure out those answers.
Step up to Skills 2.0
Start here ⇒

Why Tony Hsieh (Zappos) hates Best Practices. And why you should too

Aman Motwane — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 14:45:14 +0000

“I personally hate the term ‘best practices’ because it’s almost like a way to race to be just like everyone else,” Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, says.

And that, in a nutshell, explains Zappos’ meteoric rise. Hsieh and Zappos rose from practically nothing to a billion-dollar powerhouse specifically because they didn’t race to be just like everyone else. Specifically because they’re original with everything they do — hiring, customer service, training, performance evaluations and shipment practices.

Click to Enlarge (and Print)

Ordinary Products, Extraordinary Results

If Zappos could do this with an everyday commodity product like shoes, why can’t you?

Why aren’t you?

In fact, especially if you have an everyday commodity product or service, it is mandatory you be original with everything you do. Remember, Zappos is renowned for its legendary customer service and its uncommon culture, not its shoes. They sell pretty much the same shoes everyone else sells.

Interesting Twist

Now, here’s an interesting twist to this story: Zappos’ next practices have now become the ‘best practices’ everyone else wants to follow. Hmmm.

Real leaders don’t follow best practices. Only ordinary leaders do.

The world of business has changed so dramatically. Yet, it is amazing that most individuals and companies today are still pursuing best practices, still racing to be just like everyone else, still racing to remain ordinary.

Very, very few companies today are creating breakthrough products and breakthrough processes — from the back office to the front office.

Very few companies are pioneering new ways of doing everything — from customer service to leadership, product design, retailing, marketing and training. The subject is not even on their radar.

Quick Test to determine
if you’re the architect of Next Practices

Do others learn your next practice and adopt them as the new best practice?

The few that are (such as Apple and Southwest) enjoyed their best years during the Great Recession, emerging completely unscathed. And they succeeded precisely because they’re original in all their practices.

An Even More Interesting Twist

Extraordinary companies don’t avoid best practices just to be different from the crowd. It’s because they know that answers [best practices] from others are inherently flawed.

Following best practices sounds easy and feels safe. But it is in fact the most dangerous place to be today. It is your surest guarantee you’ll make a ton of mistakes and you’ll get trampled with the crowd.

On the flip side, when you refuse to follow best practices, you uncover new ways to excel — and your mindset sweeps across everything, propelling you to excel across everything.

The net result is that becoming extraordinary is actually far easier than following best practices and remaining ordinary.

Think about it. Extraordinary companies like Apple, Southwest and Zappos don’t work any harder than you. After all, everyone gets only 24 hours in a day — no one gets more. Yet, these companies excel across a very wide range of skills —

Apple bucked the Great Recession because it shunned the best practices in practically every discipline — including product design, branding, customer service, performance evaluations, employee training, retail store design, execution.

Southwest has become the largest airline, remaining consistently profitable in an industry legendary for losing billions because it, too, shunned the best practices in practically every discipline — including operation design, customer boarding systems, customer service, employee job descriptions, online ticketing.

These companies shunned the best practices. And as a result, they became the architect of next practices.

Life can be much broader, once you discover one simple fact, and that is that everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.

Steve Jobs

What You Must Change Now

What’s required is a simple shift. Stop pursuing the answers (best practices) everyone else is pursuing. Start mastering how to consider the right questions that very few are considering. This way, you can avoid the answers [best practices] that are wrongheaded. And you can find answers others haven’t even considered yet.

This is how you buck the trend and remain relevant in the new world of business. This is how you become the architect of next practices. And not just in the marketplace. But also in how you bring your work to the marketplace.

The end result is you become an original. You raise the bar with everything you do — from the back office to the front office. You become original with how you hire, lead, train, meet, execute, promote, recruit, evaluate performance, empower, serve customers, motivate, brand, market. You become original even in how you innovate.

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it’s time to pause and reflect.

Mark Twain

Despite all of the above, the reality is most are going to stick with pursuing best practices because it’s the [seemingly] comfortable place to be. This means you don’t even have to be that good at considering the right questions. As the old saying goes …

“In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”

If you follow best practices, you are basically a follower. Claiming you’re a leader won’t change that. Not at all. Time to step up to Skills 2.0,

Aman Motwane

Stop learning the answers the leaders figured out.
Instead, start learning the questions the leaders used
to figure out those answers.
Step up to Skills 2.0
Start here ⇒

Painful to Watch: How did they pull this off?

Aman Motwane — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 19:44:09 +0000

Your Core Values should be about making your company great. But most companies confuse that with feeling good.

At HR Executive, Maura C. Ciccarelli ‘s post inadvertently reveals that the confusion is still rampant.

Caterpillar is listed as No. 16 on its list of the Top 50 Most Admired Companies for HR. How did they pull that off?

The gist

Caterpillar was honored for having “a strong set of values centered on integrity, excellence, teamwork and commitment.”

One of the key examples cited:

“The economic crash of 2008/9 led to Caterpillar’s rescinding of job offers to college students. Rather than just saying “thanks but no thanks,” the company followed up with phone calls to explain the situation and to send the graduates checks of a couple thousand dollars apiece for the inconvenience.”

Why it’s painful to watch

This is like being asleep at the wheel and slamming into people … and being honored for having the “values,” after-the-fact, to send flowers to the hospital.

It lowers the bar. For everyone. Better to honor those who were alert at the wheel before-the-fact to not slam into others — as an example for others to follow.

A company that zigzags as Caterpillar did will have a tough time fostering integrity, excellence, teamwork or commitment — no matter what their “values” say.

Yes, it feels good to say “sorry” after the fact. But that’s not what makes you great. What makes you great is being alert and attentive enough to not allow yourself to fall in a situation that requires you to say “sorry” at all.

The genesis of Painful to Watch

When Steve Jobs was asked about innovation, he responded — “We don’t think, ‘Let’s be innovative! Let’s take a class! Here are the five rules of innovation, let’s put them up all over the company!’ When told most people do just that, he retorted, “It’s painful to watch.”

Click to Enlarge (and Print)

The problem with most companies — and Caterpillar is no exception — is they base their values on what makes them feel good rather than on what makes them great.

What they don’t realize is that when you shift your focus to becoming great, you inevitably feel good as a result. It’s a natural byproduct.

Intellectuals solve problems. Geniuses prevent them.

Albert Einstein

The reverse is not true. Caterpillar illustrates this. Their feel-good values make them reactive to unexpected events (not great), rather than alert and proactive (great).

Yes, it’s important to have values. But not any values. The right values.

How do you get to those right values? Make sure your organization learns to consider the right questions.

When you focus on the right questions, you become progressively more alert and proactive. Sadly, four years later, Caterpillar is still zigzagging — and postponing greatness.

Not furloughing is really a great discipline with respect to hiring.

Herb Kelleher
Founder, chairman emeritus, Southwest

Time to stop postponing greatness,

Aman Motwane

Make sure
your organization has “be great” values
and steers away from “feel good” values.
Start here ⇒

the shocking truth about employee surveys

Aman Motwane — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 13:00:24 +0000

At most companies, employee surveys and employee engagement initiatives make things worse. Here’s why —

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Most leaders today are mentally lazy. They’re not alert to their employees. They don’t understand what’s really going on with their employees.

The employees sense this as disinterest and disrespect. And they get disengaged.

Then, the leaders sense the disengagement, They hold management meetings where everyone wrings their hands. “Why don’t our employees bring us their A-Game?”

They discover that employee surveys is a ‘best practice’ at many, many companies.

“Aha!” they heave a sigh of relief, “Finally! We can get some answers.”

But what they don’t understand is the survey sends a clear signal to the employees: “We are clueless about you.” And “We need you to bring your A-Game and that’s why we need you to answer this survey.”

Previously, the employees suspected this. Now, they know for sure it’s true. Their worst suspicions have been confirmed. And the employees get even more disengaged.

It gets worse.

Most people just aren’t very good at telling you what they’re really feeling.

So, the “answers” your employees give you in the survey are very far removed from what they’re really feeling. And when you run with these “answers,” you end up squandering your time on the things that just aren’t the most important to your employees.

This causes your employees to feel even more disrespected. Because they took the time to respond to your survey, but nothing substantial has changed with what they really feel. And they get even more disengaged.

The reality of the other person lies not in what he reveals to you, but what he cannot reveal to you.

Kahlil Gibran

A vicious cycle.

The sad thing is most leaders are not aware of this vicious cycle. They are not aware that they are the reason their employees are disengaged. So, let me spell it out —

Yes, there’s a very scary, overall, two-decade downward trend in engagement. But … If your employees are disengaged, it has nothing to do with this trend. It has everything to do with … the leaders.

The leaders are the problem. Increasingly, leaders everywhere have become mentally lazy. That’s the really scary long-term trend. Very few are talking about it. Even fewer are doing something about it.

And it’s painful to watch.

Why mental laziness is your company’s biggest problem

Leaders who are mentally lazy cultivate organizations that are mentally lazy.

Mental laziness is at the root of most organizational problems — such as high turnover, poor innovation, poor leadership, poor teamwork, poor performance and pretty much everything else, including poor engagement.

If you have any of these problems, you can be sure it begins with mental laziness at the leadership level.

You must solve the problem at its root. Solving it at any other level is a sign of mental laziness. See? There’s no escaping this. You must confront it. Otherwise, you’ll keep going around in circles.

This is how engagement soars

So what about all those companies where employee engagement surveys actually make things better?

They don’t tell you the whole story.

Their employees are engaged not because they take employee surveys, but specifically because their leadership is alert and vested in their employees. Their employees feel respected. They sense their leaders want what’s best for them. They see their leaders investing time in their growth. They get engaged — inevitably.

When invited to take a survey, the employees see it as one more sign that their leaders want to be alert to them. And engagement improves.

A virtuous cycle.

The employee survey is just a small piece of their approach — it is nowhere near the centerpiece, even though many experts make it sound like it is.

In fact, I’d venture to guess that such companies would have great engagement even if they never took any employee surveys. Why? Read on.

I’ve carefully observed many great leaders when they study the results from their employee survey. Their most frequent words in response are, “How can we get better at catching that day-to-day?” … “Why didn’t we already know that?”

In other words, their entire focus is on how they can learn to be even more alert to their employees. They don’t get lost in the specific answers. They don’t create a laundry list of tasks so they can “fix the engagement problem.”

The height of management laziness

I’ve also observed many ordinary leaders when they study their survey results. Their most frequent words are, “This person just doesn’t get what we’re trying to do” … “Oh, that’s just one person saying that” … “That’s nothing, I‘ll fix that problem today.”

In other words, their entire focus is on denial … and/or on fixing specific problems, rather than fixing their overall problem — which is mental laziness.

One more thing …

At most truly great companies, the leaders don’t even think about employee engagement. But they enjoy it as a byproduct of who they are and how they run their company.

At such companies, the leaders are so alert to their employees, they aren’t even aware of their alertness. It’s second-nature to them.

If you ask them how they attain such a high level of engagement, they struggle to explain it to you. That’s how well they’ve internalized their alertness. It’s an intrinsic part of who they are.

When you get to that level, employee surveys become a matter of personal choice — they are not a ‘best practice,’ and they are not at all essential.

Simple, Swift, Sweeping

If you choose to take employee surveys, be very clear that you won’t get the “answers” you seek to fix your engagement problems. So, be sure to use your survey results as a report card on how mentally lazy you are. This is not your employees’ problem. It’s your problem. Fix your problem.

It’s a rather simple fix.

To the end of mental laziness,

Aman Motwane

Learn a simple, swift way
to become mentally alert
and make a sweeping transformation
of what ails your leadership
— and reap engagement as a byproduct.
Step up to Skills 2.0. Start here ⇒

the price of choosing ordinary

Aman Motwane — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 15:00:27 +0000

The effort expended and the punishment endured in remaining ordinary often exceed the effort and grief requisite for the attainment of a most marked achievement.

Eric Hoffer said that.

Why then do most choose to remain ordinary? Here’s the stark reality …

Click to Enlarge (and Print)

When you choose to remain ordinary, the mistakes you make and the problems you encounter consume you. In fact, they trigger dominoes of problems that typically take months, years, even decades to recover from.

Here are two examples —

Intuit, which lost a decade.

And Microsoft, which also lost a decade.

It’s painful to watch companies as well as individuals throwing away so much of their time — without even realizing it — just because they choose to remain ordinary.

How much time are you squandering — without realizing it — because you choose to remain ordinary?

Time to move up to extraordinary. It’s a whole lot easier.

Aman Motwane

It’s true!
Becoming extraordinary is actually far easier
than remaining ordinary.
Step up now. ⇒

‘We should’ve known better’ Part 2

Aman Motwane — Sat, 29 Dec 2012 12:58:10 +0000

When the answers (or best practices) you followed don’t work, there’s always someone waiting in the wings to give you even more answers (or best practices).

At Harvard Business Review, Boris Groysberg and Michael Slind offer just that to Microsoft.

The gist

Microsoft lost a decade.

Groysberg and Slind says it’s because they use practices such as stacked-ranking to evaluate employees.

This, they explain, give employees an incentive to compete with each other rather than collaborate.

Also, it reinforces top-down communication.

They propose a solution they call … etc., etc., etc

Why it’s painful to watch

Why not solve the problem at its roots?

Microsoft’s big and deep problem is they’ve become followers. They follow answers and best practices (in the case of stacked-ranking, they followed GE, which started this best practice, then chucked it). And, they follow product innovations.

What they need is to do a complete about-turn with how they do business. In the words of their arch enemy Steve Jobs, what they need is to be “willing to ask questions and think about things.”

The leading cause of mistakes in business is the emphasis on finding the right answers — or the best answers others are using — rather than the right questions.

More answers at Microsoft will only yield more lost years.

One day, they’ll wake up and realize, “We should’ve known better.” Until then … more lost years.

The genesis of Painful to Watch

When Steve Jobs was asked about innovation, he responded — “We don’t think, ‘Let’s be innovative! Let’s take a class! Here are the five rules of innovation, let’s put them up all over the company!’ When told most people do just that, he retorted, “It’s painful to watch.”

Click to Enlarge (and Print)

Most businesses today don’t bother with mastering the art of considering the right questions. That’s because it’s “easier” to just follow answers from others.

And also because those in the business of dispensing answers will never tell you the right questions are far more important than any answers they give you.

Time for you to have your “We should’ve known better” moment, don’t you think?

Aman Motwane

Make sure
asking the right questions up front
is imbedded into your team’s DNA.
Start here ⇒

Painful to Watch: ‘We should’ve known better’

Aman Motwane — Thu, 27 Dec 2012 16:57:00 +0000

Everyone’s had a ‘I should’ve known better’ moment. So, what’s essential is what you learned from it. But I’ve found that very few learn the lesson they should have learned. Which makes them vulnerable to many more such moments. Here’s an example:

In Inc Magazine, Intuit founder Scott Cook shares his “We should’ve known better” moment —

The gist

After great success with Quicken in North America, Mr. Cook rolled it out to the rest of the world. But the results were underwhelming. And they had to shut down their overseas operations.

Mr. Cook says their mistake was they assumed the formula they honed so perfectly in the U.S. could be cloned everywhere else. When they rolled out again, they hired locals and paid attention to local sensibilities — and attained great success.

Why it’s painful to watch

Intuit incurred huge costs and lost more than a decade for this mistake.

But it appears Mr. Cook doesn’t understand his biggest mistake — because he makes no mention of it. Intuit’s biggest mistake was that considering the right questions up front and as a way of life — rather than following ‘proven’ answers — wasn’t embedded into Intuit’s DNA. Had it been, they would have never assumed answers and formulas from one situation were transferable to other situations.

If you don’t understand the root of your mistake, you’ll likely repeat it, causing even more regrets.

The genesis of Painful to Watch

When Steve Jobs was asked about innovation, he responded — “We don’t think, ‘Let’s be innovative! Let’s take a class! Here are the five rules of innovation, let’s put them up all over the company!’ When told most people do just that, he retorted, “It’s painful to watch.”

Click to Enlarge (and Print)

Answers blind you. Relying on any answer without asking yourself the right questions is the leading cause of failure in business. If it could happen to a multibillion-dollar company like Intuit, don’t be sure it’s not happening to you.

Time for a whole different set of skills,

Aman Motwane

Make sure
asking the right questions up front
is imbedded into your team’s DNA.
Start here ⇒

should you hire for talent or attitude?

Aman Motwane — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 09:50:11 +0000

This is a question that just keeps popping up everywhere. Over and over again.

Why are we still quibbling about the wrong details?

News Flash: The world of business has changed. Fundamentally. It’s time you raised your organization to the next level. Let me explain —

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The hiring debate basically has two camps:

One one side is the talent/experience camp. Sometimes also known as the skills camp. Skills like engineering, accounting, scheduling, selling, marketing, machining, programming et al.

On the other side is the attitude camp. This camp argues that what’s most important is things like spirit, teamwork, self-motivation, EQ, ownership.

And there are some with feet in both camps.

But they’re all quibbling about the wrong details.

There’s something else that’s far, far more important than either talent or attitude — and that is “how insightful is the employee?”

Why is insightfulness so much more important?

Imagine an individual who has a great attitude but is not that insightful. Such an individual would happily and constantly pick the wrong strategies, tactics and techniques. Big fail.

On the flip side, imagine an individual who has all the right hard skills. For example, an accountant proficient with spreadsheets and ledgers and cost accounting and P&L statements et al. But what if this individual is not insightful enough to read between the numbers and so, misses the opportunities and threats to the business? Big fail. Again.

Or, imagine a leader who is up-to-date with all the latest leadership insights. But is not insightful enough to understand what an employee or a customer is really complaining about. Disaster.

Now, rise up to the next level.

Consider an insightful individual — insightful about himself/herself, and so is motivated and engaged; insightful about others, and so is an excellent, empathetic team player, leader and/or marketer; and insightful enough to separate the signal from the noise — and read between the lines and the numbers and everything else; and also, insightful enough to understand what’s necessary to become great at leadership, innovation, effectiveness, et al.

What if your job was on the line?

And in case you’re still not convinced, consider this scenario:

Imagine you’ve just been handed a project that will make or break your career. You need to pick one employee to make this project happen. How would you pick such a person? Be honest. You would instinctively look beyond education, experience, skills and attitude — and all those things everyone is quibbling about. Instead, you would home in on the person who is insightful enough to identify and execute the fastest, surest path to success. Isn’t that true?

Insightfulness trumps everything else. If you don’t hire for insightfulness, it will break your career. It’s just a matter of time. If you do hire for insightfulness, it will make the single biggest boost to your career.

Why is insightfulness in such short supply?

I can already hear you protesting, “But insightful people are so rare!”

Indeed, they are. But they’re only rare because we, as leaders, quibble about the wrong details. They’re only rare because we don’t hire for insightFULness, we don’t train for insightFULness and we don’t promote for insightFULness.

They’re only rare because we confuse being FULL of insights with being insightFUL. There’s a huge difference.

We train our people to be FULL of insights. We don’t even think about training them to be insightFUL.

We promote people based on how FULL of insights they are. We don’t even realize they’ll inevitably fail if they’re not insightFUL — not matter what their attitude.

Going back to the original question in the headline: Yes, both talent and attitude are
important, to different degrees, depending on the job and the responsibility. But you should consider them only after you’ve screened or trained people for being insightful.

And forget that age-old myth that you need age or experience to become insightFUL. Surely you’ve met at least one young person who’s an “old soul.” Their age or experience clearly has no bearing on their acuity. They’re perceptive simply because they’ve learned to ask themselves the questions that lead them to what matters most.

This means you can actually train your people (many of them!) to become insightFUL. Are you training them? Are you at least trying?

Read related post.

The sad reality is that most companies today are littered with people who are FULL of insights, their spirits broken because they haven’t been groomed to be insightFUL enough to bring real results.

What are you waiting for? Isn’t it time you bucked the trend?

Aman
(Aman Motwane)

Learn to cultivate an organization
that is insightFUL.
Learn how to move beyond people who are FULL of insights.
Step up to Skills 2.0.
Start here⇒

why your results come in bits and pieces

Aman Motwane — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 19:48:05 +0000

Most people are still looking at 21st Century business through a 20th Century lens.

You can’t afford to do this anymore.

With a 20th Century Lens, you look at business in bits and pieces. With a 21st Century Lens, you look at how the pieces fit together.

Why is this difference important? Because when you see how the pieces fit together, you become able to see how to leverage those pieces into a multitude of accomplishments. This makes you and your organization swift and nimble — essential in the 21st Century.

Yet, most of the advice you get on the internet keeps you firmly entrenched in the 20th Century.

Case in point —

At ERE, Dr. John Sullivan parses HR into bits and pieces to arrive at the conclusion “Recruiting Has the Highest Business Impact of any HR Function.”

Read on …

Click to Enlarge (and Print)

Recruiting is only part of an overall HR strategy to make sure your organization has high-impact performers throughout.

Parsing HR into bits and pieces — and singling out recruiting — swings you away from understanding how HR can have the biggest impact on the organization.

HR’s biggest impact on the organization comes from cultivating an environment where people perform at their best … rather than focusing on recruiting ‘the best.’

It is futile to recruit ‘the best’ into an organization that’s not already populated with people performing at their best. The new recruits will quickly exit … or lower themselves to the prevailing organization standard.

There’s more. Your recruiting will be unsuccessful because your recruiters won’t know how to spot the true high-impact people. After all, they’re rubbing shoulders every day with low-impact people. This filters their perspective.

When you look at an organization in bits and pieces, everything — recruiting, managing talent, employer branding, performance management, leadership development, employee engagement, et al — suffers.

Make sure you populate your organization
with high-impact people.
Start here ⇒

Kahlil Gibran

Why mental laziness is your company’s biggest problem

This is how engagement soars

The height of management laziness

Simple, Swift, Sweeping

Skills 2.0

the dirty secret behind empowerment

who do you turn to when you need answers?

Why Tony Hsieh (Zappos) hates Best Practices. And why you should too

Ordinary Products, Extraordinary Results

Interesting Twist

Quick Test to determine
if you’re the architect of Next Practices

An Even More Interesting Twist

Steve Jobs

What You Must Change Now

Mark Twain

Painful to Watch: How did they pull this off?

The gist

Why it’s painful to watch

The genesis of Painful to Watch

Albert Einstein

Herb Kelleher
Founder, chairman emeritus, Southwest

the shocking truth about employee surveys

the price of choosing ordinary

‘We should’ve known better’ Part 2

The gist

Why it’s painful to watch

The genesis of Painful to Watch

Painful to Watch: ‘We should’ve known better’

The gist

Why it’s painful to watch

The genesis of Painful to Watch

should you hire for talent or attitude?

Why is insightfulness so much more important?

What if your job was on the line?

Why is insightfulness in such short supply?

why your results come in bits and pieces

Skills 2.0

the dirty secret behind empowerment

who do you turn to when you need answers?

Why Tony Hsieh (Zappos) hates Best Practices. And why you should too

Ordinary Products, Extraordinary Results

Interesting Twist

Quick Test to determine if you’re the architect of Next Practices

An Even More Interesting Twist

Steve Jobs

What You Must Change Now

Mark Twain

Painful to Watch: How did they pull this off?

The gist

Why it’s painful to watch

The genesis of Painful to Watch

Albert Einstein

Herb Kelleher Founder, chairman emeritus, Southwest

the shocking truth about employee surveys

Kahlil Gibran

Why mental laziness is your company’s biggest problem

This is how engagement soars

The height of management laziness

Simple, Swift, Sweeping

the price of choosing ordinary

‘We should’ve known better’ Part 2

The gist

Why it’s painful to watch

The genesis of Painful to Watch

Painful to Watch: ‘We should’ve known better’

The gist

Why it’s painful to watch

The genesis of Painful to Watch

should you hire for talent or attitude?

Why is insightfulness so much more important?

What if your job was on the line?

Why is insightfulness in such short supply?

why your results come in bits and pieces

Quick Test to determine
if you’re the architect of Next Practices

Herb Kelleher
Founder, chairman emeritus, Southwest