My wife shared an excellent article with our 8 year old daughter. It’s a halftime pep talk for a daughter turning 9 years old. It’s a reflection for both parents and kids. It’s a learning opportunity for both. Relative to the business of you, it embodies some of the fundamental principles of leading a valued… Read More
Managing Our Margins
In a meeting the other day, an individual mentioned getting a supplier to manage their margins. In business, margin management can mean different things to different functions. To a program manager it is the process of looking at risk from a margin perspective, addressing costs and revenues together as a single unit of risk. Looking… Read More
Are You Minding Your Gaps
The gap between what we want and where we are creates tension in our lives. This tension may be used to create worry. It can be felt as stress or emotional upset which can even lead to physical pain. It can also be utilized to our benefit. Tension is a form of energy. Like a… Read More
Giving Ourselves Mental Workouts
In order to get the most out of our mental assets, we need to manage those factors that affect them. Our beliefs about ourselves and how we work can directly affect our success. Specifically, our beliefs about our intelligence and memory are of interest here. Is our intelligence something that is given to us through… Read More
Managing Our Time and Distractions
The internet is an amazing invention born out of the minds of millions of people. It’s an pattern of our collective minds. When I was a Large Scale Information Space Research Engineer, we found the internet is strewn with all kinds of off topic information intended to draw us to websites. In creating a topically constrained… Read More
Accepting and Planning for Randomness
It’s up to us to give ourselves flexibility of schedule. When have things ever gone as planned. It does happen, but there are always things that come up. On a trip to the store traffic is horrible for no apparent reason. Getting our license renewed there’s a three-hour wait instead of the typical hour and… Read More
Our Behavior Begets Success
I recently had a parent teacher conference. My eight year old daughter is doing well. She improved from the first conference this year. What struck me is a discussion we had with the teacher about behavior. The list of behaviors of behaviors evaluated are: takes pride in work, works independently does neat work positive attitude… Read More
Deciding to Play
Play is unstructured fun where there are few or no expectations on the outcome. When we are young, playing comes natural. Kids naturally play alone or with other kids. They don’t worry about what needs to be done next or when the recess bell will ring. They simply play. They have fun with what they… Read More
Do the Important Things
Living moment to moment as we all do, there are things we can do that align with our purpose and the objectives of the businesses we integrate with. When we act in a manner not aligned with our purpose and vision, we waste our energy. This doesn’t mean we can’t relax and unwind. In those… Read More
Talk Simply Being Aware of Change
In a status review meeting the other day, the was a comment to “Keep the presentation simple” and “Only talk to the variances.” Both of these statements had the intent of driving people to present as effectively and efficiently as possible. How can the ideas behind these statements be applied to our personal lives? Keeping our… Read More
Business of You 