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Author Archives: Russ Aebig
Memories
Recently, Seth Godin made a great point in Personal Branding in the Age of Google that while checking into applicants for a babysitting position he “Googled” each applicant and learned a lot about them through posts they had made on Facebook and other social sites. [A good read on this is Oh, What a Tangled Web Print We Leave, by Brett Popplewell] This is a great example of how people’s behaviors on-line mirror their off line identities. At least for those people that use their own identities on-line. Continue reading
The Art of Building a Team
Over the course of the last twenty years I’ve been part of and put together dozens of teams. Over the last few years I’ve been putting together teams more often. I’ve found that it is important to recognize that teams evolve. They take on an identity. They have a culture. At the beginning of a project they are a collection of individuals, at the end of a project the team is far more than the sum of its people – in ways that are difficult to predict. At its essence, teams are organic entities which are grown as opposed to assembled or built. Continue reading
Posted in Leadership, Management, Process, Technology
Tagged goals, team, values, web2.0, workforce dynamics
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Keeping Proper Perspective
Two of the weblogs I follow had interesting posts recently. The fist post by Seth Godin was titled Do You Have 16 Boxes?. In this post Seth elegantly describes a method of keeping perspective by (and I paraphrase here) imagining 16 boxes with each box representing a part of your life. As one box is doing very well, others may be doing poorly. By looking at the bigger picture, meaning all 16 boxes, it is much easier to stay in balance. Continue reading
Posted in Leadership, Management, People / Talent
Tagged balance, focus, Management, perspective
2 Comments
Cautious Steps Make Little Progress
I read an interesting saying the other day, “People who take caution with every step make little progress.” In my experience as a management consultant I have seen many people who require a tremendous amount of information before they make decisions. In some cases there are many uncertainties which need to be worked through and in others it is simply a management style. Continue reading
Posted in Management, People / Talent
Tagged action, caution, decision, Management, progress
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Bet the Company Thinking
Business 101 starts with defining a business model that solves a real problem for a set of people, and doing so at a price which people will pay to address their need. This business model will account for risks, and a conscious decision is made to pursue the business (or not) based on these risks.
In some cases, the risks are very high and the potential rewards correspondingly high. The most extreme of these are called “bet the company” decisions – and rightfully so, the risks are realized it could destroy the company. The fundamental concept that both extremes are possible serves as an internal regulator for decisions Continue reading
Connectivity Dependence
For a 24 hour period today I will be in an area with very poor Internet connectivity. This isn’t backpacking in the Andes, it’s downtown Tacoma, WA. This is in no way a condemnation of Tacoma, but a reminder that even in the urban environments we often have “dead zones” that we have to deal with. Continue reading
Do You Need a Business Case?
I frequently work with organizations at the lower end of the maturity scale, due to no fault of their own. In many cases business has rapidly outgrown the IT capability or capacity to support them, or there was a conscious prior decision to outsource much of the IT operation and is now being brought back in house albeit without the people or process infrastructure to support it. In these cases, IT Departments which demand to have solid business cases before they undertake any new work are doing themselves and their organizations a disservice. Continue reading
What Do We Look For in Our Leaders?
Given that leadership is something that virtually all people look for, what does leadership mean, and is it different for each person? Is it as simple as understanding that people will follow a person who will make some aspect of their life better, or is there more to it? Do people look for some of themselves in their leaders or do they want something different? Do people look to their leaders to inspire them? Do people look for different things in their leaders in good times and bad? Continue reading
Do Values Scale?
Recently I had the opportunity to dine with Ken Majer who has been doing outstanding work in the area of values and their effect on companies. He makes a great case that the corporate values should be established before the vision, and mission of a company as misalignment of values will inadvertently cause the strategies to fail during execution.
From a company growth perspective, companies in start-up mode typically involve only a handful of people. It will also be likely that each of these people will hold in common a value set, and be passionate about these values. Everyone in these companies will typically wear many hats and quite often cover for each other. In a small company, if these people did not share the same values they likely could not coexist. Likewise, if they did not share a passion for what they were doing they would likely not be in a start-up. Continue reading
Posted in Management, People / Talent
Tagged collaboration, growth, life cycle, net generation, values, workforce dynamics
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The Push
Layoffs are bad. Layoffs hurt.
They are devastating to those people being laid off. The individuals being laid off and their families are hurt financially and emotionally. Assuming those performing the layoff are not masochists, they will go through a great deal of pain as well. The people who remain in the company after the layoff will have lost friends and in some ways grieve for them while they pick up their workload. Continue reading
Posted in Management, People / Talent
Tagged bad news, layoffs, perspective, silver lining, unexpected consequences
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