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Previous Newsletters
- December 2009 — Who's In Charge Here?
- November 2009 — Cut Loose the Anchors
- October 2009 — Don't Just Do Something, Stand There!
- September 2009 — We Multi-Task Here
- August 2009 — Gut Power
- July 2009 Not So Great Expectations
- June 2009 — At Home To Mr. Cockup
- May 2009 — Right To Midnight
- April 2009 — How To Not Make A Lightbulb
- Suggestions
If you have a particular topic you would like to see addressed in a future newsletter, please email your suggestions to steve@7stepsahead.com.
March 2010 — Who Needs Team Building?
When the Red Sox put a new player on the team, they're ready to compete the next day. Well, okay, maybe not. In fact, they may be ready to go out and start practicing, but they do everything they can to avoid going into competition with a new player on the team. No matter how good that player is, that individual excellence is not sufficient to win games. Instead, they spend time training until they can perform as a cohesive unit: every member of the team needs to understand at an almost intuitive level how each of the others plays.
February 2010 — The Godot Effect
As published by ERE.Net
Personally, I wouldn't even know him if I saw him.
-- Estragon, Waiting For Godot
Some years ago I was sitting in a product design meeting. The discussion kept circling around some particularly knotty issues that no one in the room actually knew much about. In one sense, this wasn't a serious problem given that the company was still actively hiring and there was a recognition that more people were needed. Someone finally commented that we'd have to make sure to hire someone with the particular expertise in question and, in one fell swoop, that task was assigned to a non-existent person. Again, this is not necessarily a problem… yet. It became a problem, however, as the meeting progressed:
January 2010 — 7 Things You Should Communicate
As published by ERE.Net
It's not enough to say that if you want to keep the best people when the economy improves, you just need to communicate more. It matters what you say and how and when you say it. Communication occurs in the context that you've created over time, and how your communications will be received will depend a great deal on that context. If you want to keep your best people, then you need to do your homework. (Or, conversely, if you want to recruit someone else's key people, find companies that did not do the homework suggested in this article.)
If you are interested in reprinting one of these articles or having a new article written for your publication, please contact us for more information.
