My brother works at a small start-up manufacturing consumer dietary products, & recently told me a story with a good lesson. The boss has been very successful in growing this company, & knows his product & market very well. But product competency doesn’t equal leadership competency. In a recent meeting, in which this boss quizzes
People see leaders who make sound judgment calls as heroes; those who show poor judgment–the marketplace rarely treats them well. But making calls can’t be avoided when you’re in charge. Sound judgment is a key leadership trait that can be developed with thought & practice. Business professors Tichy & Bennis found that leaders make important
As of 2015 YouTube had over 2 million cat videos! But no matter how amusing they are, I’m glad that I’m not a cat. Cats are mastered by their environment, reacting to stimuli & immediately responding. They sense food, danger, or a pretty young feline, and have automatic responses. But automatic responses are not always
On Sunday 28 October 2018 Soft Power Skills Academy joined the fight against breast cancer at Wacoal Motion Run (21.1 & 10.55 km). According to the World Health Organization, breast cancer is the most common cancer in women around the world…but women in developed countries have a significantly higher survival rate (80% in North America,
Are you a Microsoft or Apple fan? For over 30 years 2 tech giants have used very different marketing strategies, with avid fans on both sides of the argument. With strong biases, many are either avid Apple or Microsoft fans with no in-between. But if you were looking to these as models to decide your
Scientists have captured real-time video of light splitting at a barrier…at a mind-blowing 10 trillion frames per second. At the Caltech Optical Imaging Laboratory, scientists developed this compressed ultrafast photography (T-CUP) to capture for the 1sttime a single ultrashort laser pulse as it hits & splits at a beam splitter. Technologies are constantly advancing, faster
If you want engagement and ownership from people in the workplace, you can start by helping everyone realize that they are leaders…all the time. From the new hire who steps in the door, to the 30-year veteran (if those still exist in this business environment!), everyone in the organization is somewhere along a Leaders’ Spectrum.
“People make good choices in contexts in which they have experience, good information, and prompt feedback.” Which of these 3 elements required for good decisions is usually most difficult to obtain? What specific ways can you improve each of those areas for yourself or your team? These are good questions for supervisors and other decision-makers
Your decision-making is more vulnerable to irrational thought than you’re probably willing to admit, according to scientists. Dr. Ariely describes experiments showing “anchoring,” in which an unrelated piece of information, just by being received first in a decision-making sequence, influences our decisions. For example, he had students write down the last 2 digits of their
How is it possible a needle can be left in a child’s heart after surgery, not once, but twice, in 2 years at the same hospital? The medical profession still suffers from too many human errors. A 2016 Johns Hopkins study estimated that more than 250,000 deaths per year were due to medical error in the U.S. alone!
