Holly Green
Education budgets at the national, state, and local levels have all taken huge hits over the past few years. And while we all want our schools to have sufficient funding to educate our children, more money is not the magic bullet solution for what our educational system needs. The truth is, our educational system is…
Recently I worked with a very successful company that brought me in to shake things up and show them how to stoke the new product pipeline. In other words, help them innovate. I led strategy sessions with the senior management team. I gave company-wide presentations on the importance of innovation. I coached middle managers on…
The human brain is a marvelous tool. However, it was designed for a very different world than we currently live in. As a result, it retains many design flaws that do not serve us well, especially in today’s business world where new ways of thinking and ongoing innovation are essential for success. Perhaps the most…
Confabulate. Isn’t that a delightful word! The first time I heard it I thought it must be a sniglet, a term coined by comedian Rich Hall in the ˜80s. Loosely defined as “any word that isn’t in the dictionary but should be,” sniglets usually involve a clever play on two or more words to humorously…
Have you ever had a meeting that didn’t work out quite as planned? Where everyone agreed to a specific course of action and two weeks later you discover that what they’ve been working on doesn’t come close to your vision of what should happen? When these situations arise, we usually blame poor communication. We didn’t…
Recently I wrote about the dangers of relying on conventional wisdom to make critical business decisions. I thought it would be fun to look at some actual examples from over the years. This “telephone” has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to…
If you could do ONE thing to make 2011 your best year ever, what would it be? According to three out of every four respondents in a recent Better Homes and Gardens survey, it would consist of “decluttering” their lives. In other words, getting rid of all the stuff that seems important (but really isn’t)…
As business leaders, we like to think of ourselves as thoughtful, rational creatures that carefully weigh all the evidence and then make logical, informed decisions. If only it were that simple. Far too often, our “rational” decision-making processes fall victim to our own preconceived notions about how the world should work, as well as a…
Running a red light in order to save a few precious seconds is one of the dumbest, most irrational things people do. Yet we do it all the time, in business and in real life. The other day, while driving home from a long session with a client, the light in front of me suddenly…
One of the biggest dangers in business is MSU, or making stuff up, especially when we don’t realize we are doing it. I see leaders and managers do it all the time, and the consequences to people and profits can be horrific. With the newly passed health care bill, our entire nation is about to…
People ask me all the time what I consider to be the biggest challenge facing today’s business leaders. I don’t even hesitate on this one. It’s the automatic assumption by most business leaders that we still live in a fairly predictable world. Think about it. Six months ago, who would have thought that Toyota would…
Finally, some evidence that the economy is starting to show signs of life! In its June 2009 Investment Outlook, Morgan Stanley Smith Barney reported that eight of their nine economic signposts for 2009, which represent a varied mix of indicators from consumer sentiment to U.S. leading economic indicators, have posted an upward trend since the…
