This past Sunday afternoon I found myself in the midst of a standoff with my five year old grandson, Miles. A few minutes earlier his mother had suggested that maybe I’d like to give him some help with a jigsaw puzzle that was partially completed. Both he and I thought this was a grand idea so we set to it.

I immediately noticed that while he had successfully located many pieces he had failed to complete the border. It looked like he had been focusing on the mid section of the puzzle. Here was an opportunity for grandpa to help! I began sorting pieces, looking for those that had the one flat side of an outer edge. Everyone knows that with jigsaw puzzles the most efficient approach is to complete the border then work toward the middle which I helpfully pointed out to Miles. He wasn’t nearly as excited about this information as I thought he would be but “Oh well, we do what we can!”

Within a few minutes I had sorted through the edge pieces while he continued to work the middle. I passed these over to him and he made the proper connection, always returning to working the mid-section of the picture.

Using my method things moved swiftly. Shortly thereafter ...

I have heard that a lot of companies are having trouble finding the talent they need these days. I would love to help them solve their problem but they seem to have a problem with me. I am 66 years old and am not looking for full time employment!

These days most mornings I am usually up between 7 and 8 unless it is the weekend and then I’ll sleep in until 9. I get up, head downstairs, feed the first cat, heat the water for coffee, uncover the parrot and scratch his head. Gotta scratch his head or he starts yelling!

Once the water gets hot I make a cup of coffee for myself and a cup of decaf for my wife, go out to the garage to bring in the other cat, (he has night terrors!) and get his breakfast then take the decaf upstairs to my wife where she has usually started her work day on her laptop while still in bed.

Back downstairs I check the morning news ~ usually three or four websites each day and maybe a favorite blog or two. Being on the west coast gives me the advantage of knowing that both business and politics are well underway by the time I get going so there is almost always something to entertain me at the start of the day.

By ...

Maybe you've heard this story. I heard it today.

A hunter walks into a field one autumn morning. Alongside him is his newly acquired full pedigree retrieving dog. This is their first hunt together.

Within minutes they arrive at the duck blind and the hunter takes his position. Soon a small flock appears. The hunter rises up and quickly dispatches a single duck. His retriever leaps from the blind and bounds across the surface of the water and returns with the fallen duck. The hunter, not believing his eyes, shakes his head and decides that he was just seeing incorrectly in the early morning haze. Again he takes his position in the blind and within minutes another flock approaches. The hunter fires his gun and his aim is once more true. The young hound leaps from the blind and again dashes across the water’s surface to retrieve the fallen fowl.

Now in complete amazement the hunter calls over a comrade from a nearby blind and asks him to watch with him as yet another flock approaches. Again he fires and again his aim is true. Yet again the young dog dashes across the water’s surface to retrieve the fallen duck. The hunter turns to his friend and asks him to explain what they have ...

When management decisions motivated by self interest jeopardize the entire economy of a region, we may indeed eventually see the scenario as a question of ethics…

There is no doubt in my mind that the story that continues to unfold at Boeing with the debacle of the “next big thing in air travel” is destined to become a classic management case study in business schools around the world.

Earlier this month Steve Denning offered a compelling two-part analysis of the continuing saga of Boeing’s management and what has become the nightmarish legend of the Dreamliner 787. Denning writes for Forbes and is currently considered a leading light within the community of proponents for a shift to 21^st Century Management Practices.

In Part 1 subtitled “Seven Lessons Every CEO Must Learn”  Denning asserts a related set of “must learns”…

• Use the right metrics to evaluate offshoring
• Review whether earlier outsourcing decisions made sense
• Don’t outsource mission critical components
• Bring some manufacturing back
• Adequately assess the risk factors of offshoring
• Adequately value the role of innovation

These six lessons stem from a single major ...

“Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done.”       Peter Drucker

Last Thursday I sat in my evening Organizational Behavior class as several groups of students made their final presentations. The students were using material they had gathered after perusing many entries to something called a “hackathon” sponsored by ‘the MIX’ during the fall of this year. (If you haven’t discovered ‘the MIX’ and you are serious about engagement and performance do yourself a favor and head over there soon.)  These people, who know the world of work, currently working, some managing, most not, had shared with me early in the quarter some of their horror stories about what had passed for performance reviews. Mostly they had complained about the sort of “drive by” feel these events, how it left them feeling more used as props in a process than resources that were appreciated. They had expectations of being groomed and developed for even greater opportunities. Oh to be young and idealistic!

I had sent them to ‘the MIX’ for their own education but also to have them get a sense of how pervasive the general sense of displeasure is around a common ...