Category: leadership
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random thoughts on “Acres of Diamonds”
Russel Conwell (February 15, 1843 – December 6, 1925) (from wikipedia) “was an American Baptist minister, orator, philanthropist, author, lawyer, and writer. He is best remembered as the founder and first president of Temple University in Philadelphia, as the Pastor of The Baptist Temple, and for his inspirational lecture, ‘Acres of Diamonds’.” A link to the full text of Mr.…
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Feedback, praise, and constructive criticism
Starting with a definition: Communication is “a process by which information is exchanged between individuals through a common system of symbols, signs, or behavior” (thank you Merriam-Webster — emphasis mine) Notice the emphasis on “information is exchanged.” If INFORMATION is NOT being EXCHANGED then you don’t have “communication.” Two people yelling at each other might…
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Team building
The word “team” implies a coordinated ensemble. The word comes into the English language via Old High German with obvious “draft animal” connotations. Since modern English is a combination of Germanic and French/Latin vocabularies, we tend to have multiple words for the same concept – e.g. the French/Latin companion to “team” is probably “companion”/”company” (please…
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Marketing and Propaganda
In its best form “marketing”/”advertising” is just “information” If you have a great product that does “whatever” the best use of your “marketing” budget is to build awareness of the products benefits among folks that need to do “whatever it is that your product does” e.g. say you make beer or running shoes – and…
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Profit Margins
If a company is “profitable” over a long period of time that PROBABLY means it is “well run” or “managed properly.” Of course we need to define “long period of time” — in a healthy economy companies will come and go just by the natural cultural shifts and technological advances. e.g. Thirty years ago multiple…
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Modern “basics” of I.T.
Come my friends, let us reason together … (feel free to disagree, none of this is dogma) There are a couple of “truisms” that APPEAR to conflict – Truism 1: The more things change the more they stay the same. … and then … Truism 2: The only constant is change. Truism 1 seems to…
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“Leadership”, “Teaching”, and “Education”
Just some random thoughts – Starting off with a famous quote attributed to Albert Einstein – If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough Albert Einstein Leadership The Einstein quote came to mind for a “2 drink story” reason that I will not relate here. I’ve been a “student of leadership”…
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experience, time in service, and understanding
Another of my quixotic projects is making a video production of reading Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essays – which I’m sure would appeal to maybe a handful of folks worldwide. BUT considering my track record in “estimating market potential” something that I think has zero potential would probably perform better than the ideas that I think…
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leadership is communication, “winning”
I wrote a long post that either needs editing or deletion – but at least it served as “pre writing” for this post. status quo If you want to be precise the “status quo” is simply the “current situation.” Which technically means that whatever is happening at the moment is the “status quo.” Usually the…
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“great resignation”, part-time employees, engagement
I think I have commented on my love of “buzzwords” enough – that we can just jump into the “great resignation”/reshuffle/reprioritization/recognition/whatever … SO a significant number of people are choosing NOT to go back to jobs they obviously found “unsatisfying.” Trying to come up with a single reason “why” is pointless – because there (probably)…