I’ve been struggling with purpose of late at work. In my home life, my purpose is clear. We have kids in school and we want to enable them to be successful in the path they choose for their own lives. We talk to our five- and nine-year olds about the options, pros, cons and potential… Read More
Creating Ourselves
Having a vision of our future is establishing a new identity. When we immerse ourselves in the identity we want to become, we start seeing the opportunities that support and create our vision. Having a plan to bring about our new identity is extremely important. It builds a foundation for who we want to be.… Read More
Slow Down to Go Fast
In my youth, I used to think that being safe was being conservative and not focusing on getting the job done. After a couple decades of experience beyond my youth and attending the safety classes my work is offering, I’ve learned safety comes from awareness. Awareness comes from thinking about what might happen, understanding the… Read More
Focusing on the Important Things
Determining what’s important in the moment is a key to the unlocking the door to an enjoyable life. As we mentioned in the last post, importance and urgency can be arranged to form a matrix. This matrix can be used to understand how we need to focus our attention, attitude and actions to create the… Read More
The Fire of Focus
Time may be the fire in which we burn, but our focus is what catches us on fire. Our focus determines our reality. It has the ability to stress us out, feel tranquil or simply be happy. Time is a limited renewable resource provided we wake up every day. How we use our time and… Read More
Profit comes when the job is done right.
“Profit comes when the job is done right.” This idea came up during a discussion with a friend of mine about facilitating a paradigm shift at work. When a company is focused on profit, project centricity becomes primary. This is natural as project management is critical to managing earned value in the quest to maximize… Read More
What’s Next?
I was talking to my four-year old while driving to martial arts class. He was asking why I switched lanes. I told him that I had to look ahead and think about what I had to do next. To get to his martial arts class I had to switch lanes so we could turn. I… Read More
What’s important?
I had the opportunity to speak with our resident risk management expert today. We were discussing enterprise risk management, the tools to do so and what is necessary to manage risk. He then said something directly related to Managing the Business of You. “If you don’t know what’s important to you then what’s important to… Read More
What is a Learning Organization?
The idea of a learning organization is typically associated with companies that continuously transform and adapt to remain competitive in business. Peter Senge coined the idea from his research of systems at the MIT Sloan School of Management and work with colleagues. A learning organization has five main features: systems thinking, personal mastery, mental models,… Read More
What’s your event horizon?
In a meeting recently, I queried a program manager(PM) about the plan to get something done in a month. The PM indicated he couldn’t answer as his event horizon was at best a week from now. We both laughed as it was excellent nerdy humor within a company that builds spacecraft systems and components that… Read More
Business of You 