Within every organization, and team… and sometimes a group of friends or family… there tend to be one or two folks who are prone to drama. These folks would never admit it, but they relish in the ‘water cooler’ talk. Of course, it’s a spectrum and ideally if it’s within an organization, you work towards creating a culture where this behavior is recognized as trivial; however, it always exists to a certain extent. There’s a reason many people love reality TV – it’s entertaining!
(more…)Tips & Tricks
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What will your best people think?
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Invest in the Best
While working in private equity, I started to notice a phenomenon: within a portfolio of investments, the ones that received the most attention, energy, effort, and mindshare, were always the worst performing companies. The worst performing companies were more likely to miss budget, disappoint customers, and make errors of strategic judgment (or some combination). The management teams at these companies required significantly more direct involvement, and on some occasions, had to be replaced. It was a lot. Sometimes these intensive efforts would continue for years. And unfortunately, all of the extra effort, time, and energy seemed to rarely turn a significantly underperforming investment into a great one. Most of the time, it was about fighting to protect the initial investment.
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6 vs. 9
My experience as a people leader, and from working with and speaking to many people leaders, is we often default to a normal distribution when it comes to performance evaluation: if we’re evaluating people’s performance out of 10, we’ll say most people are a 7.5, maybe there are a few 9’s or 10’s, and while we hope it’s a rare case, there might be a few people at a 6 or below.
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