MGW #23 – How to Retain Talent Welcome to the Mighty Good Work relaunch. The focus hasn’t changed – this is still a podcast for people who want to make work a place worthy of the time we dedicate to it and for leaders and aspiring leaders who are committed to inspiring the same.  We’ve […]

Team maintenance is easy to overlook. You’ve got stuff to do. Your team has stuff to do. THE PROBLEM People are the best part of your business, and they’re the hardest part. Your team has an operating system, an engine, that defines the way it functions. Company culture. And Deloitte gives us a few striking […]

Fear of the unknown is one of the great performance killers. It doesn’t have to be. Embrace the Fear We’ve got a choice. We can freeze. Or flee. Or fight.  Most of us clench our jaw, grit our teeth, hold our breath, and try to face down the fear. That’s the circumstance in which fear […]

We recently conducted a workshop on cultivating a high-performance, collaboration culture at HR West in Oakland. Here’s a teaser. Feedback is a critical component. A Common Critical Feedback Error At one point, a CEO in our workshop loudly bragged. “Here’s what I do. My executive assistant knows she’s doing a good job when she doesn’t […]

Accountability: an obligation or willingness to accept responsibility or to account for one’s actions Who’s it for? Accountability is one of the biggest concerns for leaders today. It’s a word I hear multiple times daily. At The Yes Works, we very often get the question, “How do I hold people accountable?” People resist accountability when they […]

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” Says who? Often, it’s said to be Peter Drucker — management guru for the ages. Why? How does culture eat strategy for breakfast? Who do you imagine will perform better… A team of competent, motivated, collaborators without a plan at the start of the day, or a team of arrogant, […]

Empathy is a relatively new buzzword in discussions of corporate leadership. And it’s a good thing. Without empathy, leaders cannot profoundly effect employee engagement, motivation, and performance. With empathy, they can. Empathy alone can be disastrous. It’s important to be able to relate to one another’s feelings, to understand where one another is coming from, […]

How can you boost your company’s profits by an average of 24%? HR Magazine says spending $1600 per employee can do just that. Where to focus your training efforts The present matters. And largely, it’s taking care of itself. The future of your firm relies on innovation. Not necessarily innovation with a capital “I”. It […]

“The only thing that is constant is change.” — Heraclitus If change is so constant, why do we suck at change management so badly? Right now around the country, change initiatives are failing by the dozen. A few of these initiatives fail because they are ill conceived notions. A few fail because they’re poorly planned. […]

People often undermine their own leadership development by looking to established leaders for help solving problems that they can solve on their own. It’s a part of human nature, and a personal-risk mitigation play. “If I ask the boss for the solution, I won’t be responsible for any failure.” Put another way, “I won’t get […]

The Dress Code Situation For years, General Motors had a dress code in their employee handbook that was 10 pages long. Whoa. “What’ll I wear today?” Glancing through the closet. “Wait a second, wait a second.” Sitting in the reading chair and picking up a ten pound employee handbook. “Gotta do a little source research […]

The Teamwork Challenge People say things to us all the time that don’t seem to make sense. The easy thing, the automatic response, for so many people is to respond with: That makes no sense. You make no sense. What are you talking about? You have no idea what you’re talking about. That’s a terrible […]