In preparation for a recent consulting engagement, the client, Tim, said, “I want you to track meeting attendance. If people don’t come to your meetings, I want to know why.” Tim was worried about the cultural changes we needed to discuss for the client’s ability to be more effective. Tim had good reasons to worry […]
Barney, a senior manager, said, “I need everyone to return to the office. I’m okay with what they’re doing, although I miss the buzz of people doing the work. But I don’t know how to build the human connection with them when they’re not here.” I nodded. “You’re always telling me to have empathy with
One of the themes that runs through the Successful Independent Consulting: Relationships That Focus on Mutual Benefit is: “Invite people to your newsletter.” Why? Because those people gave you permission to market to them. Your subscribers don’t have to like everything you write—as long as they like most of what you write. Or that you
Every minute, it seems as if someone is talking about how great ChatGPT is. It’s going to revolutionize the world! I agree— I am sure AI will revolutionize the world. At some point. But I think it’s going to remove all those busy-work jobs, not the jobs where we, as humans, offer value. Here’s a
This morning, I read Dwayne Phillips’ A New Writing Project at Home. I have the same problem, although my Successful Independent Consulting book is NOT YET DONE. (The book is now done.) The book isn’t done yet because I’m waiting for other people (indexer, cover designer, layout person) to finish their work. (At some point,
I’ve been talking with a very sharp leader about how that person uses the ideas of risk and technical debt. I’m paraphrasing, but the leader said something like this: “We realize we need to incur some technical debt. So we explain that we choose to include the debt as part of our risk mitigation. That’s
Too many managers don’t know how to manage remote people. Worse, those managers, or their organizations, don’t trust people to do a good job. The organization installs spyware to see if people are working. That’s classic Theory X behavior. However, people are smarter than the spyware. Many of these spied-upon people have installed mouse (and
Back when I wrote Writing Secret 5: Decide on One Ideal Reader, I suggested there was one primary reader and other secondary readers. That’s not wrong, but it’s incomplete. Nonfiction writing causes people to decide, rethink, or change their actions, all a change of some sort. That means the ideal reader for a given piece
Do you struggle with writing? You’d like to write more and faster, but things are just not working for you. I can help. I have opened the Q2 2023 Free Your Inner Writer workshop for registration. If you want to write easier and faster, read the book. If you want my support in your writing,
At a recent client, a senior leader, Tim, said, “We realize we can’t do everything, but we don’t know how to get a handle on what we need to do.” We talked about what they measured and how long it took them to make decisions. (See Why Minimize Management Decision Time.) Tim explained that they