I love bicycling. And I love watching the Tour de France, the Super Bowl of cycling. The Tour is an annual 21-stage race with three weeks of furious cycling primarily held in France. This year it was mountain-heavy and covered 2,084 miles with only two rest days. One thing I know is that herculean challenges like the Tour provide some great lessons about teamwork and leadership. Continue →
Are You a Lone Ranger When Setting Goals?
For years I was the “Mr. Idea Man” in our company. But that’s my job…isn’t it? As the leader of the company, I thought it was my job to generate the ideas and map-out how to implement them. Eventually, I learned that there was a better way to lead my team – a way to increase innovation and manage change at the same time. Continue →
What Can Albert Einstein Teach Us About Leadership?
A few years ago, a friend told about hearing Billy Graham tell the following story as the keynote speaker honoring the delegates to the United Nations in New York: Continue →
Quality is Contagious – a Summary
As we wrap up this topic about our company-wide quality improvement efforts, it is important to give credit where credit is due! Our first Operation QIC® company-wide workshop was quite a success. It proved to be the catalyst for the significant results that occurred afterwards. But, I want to be the first to say that it was team effort and NOT all about Bobby Albert. Continue →
3 Simple Principles To Help You DO Quality- Not Just TALK It
A couple of months after our first Operation QIC® (pronounced “quick” for Quality Is Contagious) company-wide workshop, I had an interesting conversation. I was on the same flight, from Dallas-Ft. Worth (DFW) to Chicago, as a friend, who was a plant manager of about 1,000 employees in the aerospace industry. Continue →
Feedback is the “Breakfast of Champions”
What does a cookbook have to do with an empowered workplace culture? Well, for me it has everything to do with it! Let me explain… Continue →
Catch the Quality Epidemic by “Scoping-Out” Four Questions
Because of the tremendous success of my company’s first Operation QIC® (pronounced “quick” for Quality Is Contagious) half-day workshop, eight months later we had our second Operation QIC workshop. Continue →
5 Baby Steps to Build A Mature Team
I can remember feeling stuck. I knew that I wanted to rally our people around a common theme for the coming year, but I did not know what the theme should be! I was certain about the need to cast the vision and unify our people, but I was unsure of how to do it. Have you ever felt this way? Read on and learn what I discovered about team-building. Continue →
A Summary of the ON/IN Principle
I remember it well – getting to the end of a busy workweek, only to realize that the next workweek had already started! Some days I felt like a gerbil in a spinning wheel – lots of activity, but little real progress. Then I discovered the wisdom of the ON/IN™ principle… Continue →
8 Simple Questions That Will Dramatically Grow Your Business!
In 1999, a friend told me about a seminar that he had attended. Each seminar participant received a cap with the word ON on the front of the cap and the word IN on the back of the cap. Continue →