Three Ways to Make Someone’s Day
Great leaders – the ones who can really get the best out of people – understand the importance of working with folks holistically. It’s essential to treat people as human beings, not just employees, because human beings get pushed on…
Five Lessons in Awesomeness from Tom Petty
My favourite podcast is called Stop Podcasting Yourself and a few months ago its hosts Dave Shumka and Graham Clark talked about Running Down a Dream, the documentary about Tom Petty that you can find on Netflix. I love Tom…
Six Strategies for Solving Big Problems
In our professional lives, we’re frequently confronted with difficult decisions whose scope and complexity can be overwhelming. Big problems can place you in organizational paralysis. Here are six strategies for breaking out of that stasis to solve big problems effectively…
Five professional lessons from Pulp Fiction
Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction is an American neo-noir film chock full of crime, drugs, twisting, and jiving. It’s hip, happening and, while it dates back to 1994, there are plenty of professional lessons scattered between Vincent Vega’s (freaky) stabbing of Mia…
Five Career Lessons from Agile Management
Agile methodology is a business practice that encourages collaboration and empowers people to make decisions as close to customers/members as possible in order to continuously improve the planning and delivery of a project. Last week I listened to this HBR…
How We Will Realize Our Potential in 2016
With a new year upon us, it’s time for Michael, Kurt and I to engage in a The Potentiality New Year’s tradition and make public commitments about how we will realize our potential in 2016. By aligning goals with our natural talents, being…
Seven Reasons That Millennials are Your Community’s Greatest Asset
The Internet is chock full of articles about what’s holding back Millennials (or Gen Y) in the workplace. Authors like Inc’s JT O’Donnell insist on using the pronoun “they” to describe us (born in 1981 I’m a stalwart ambassador of this…
Three Ways to Lead Amidst Ambiguity
Navigating uncertainty. Working in the grey. Change management. Process transformation. Whatever you call it, in many organizations working without clarity and amidst ambiguity is the new normal. Priorities, tools and people are changing more frequently than ever in order to…
Five Ways to Achieve Focus Through Listening
I’m on a journey to become a better listener. This journey will make me a better leader, dad and partner/friend. For the most part, my listening skills are fine; this said, I am an enthusiastic talker who loves to fill…
Three Career Lessons I Learned from Tossing Hay Bales
I grew up in a small rural community on Vancouver Island, British Columbia called Merville. When I was a kid I helped my dad help his best friend clear hundreds of hay bales from his field. When I was a…