Maslow’s Hammer, Digitized
Abraham Maslow is attributed with saying that “if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail”. Most of us are guilty of falling prey to such thinking in our personal and professional lives at some points in time. However, I think this mode of thinking also affects organizations. Individuals and organizations attempting to remain relevant and thrive in the digital age should resist the temptation to focus too much effort on transforming their existing skills, products and...
Read MoreSharpening the Saw
One of the benefits of being a free agent / contractor is that between contracts, you get to wipe the slate clean and start over. Downtime between gigs provides the opportunity to evaluate what worked and what didn’t in your last engagement and in general, assess and document what you learned. It also affords you the opportunity to overlay your last engagement with all your prior experiences. It’s quite interesting to see what similarities you find (in people, company cultures,...
Read MoreA Real Good Business Book
A few weekends back, while enjoying a beach day with family, I took along a book I had purchased a couple of months ago named “Rules of Thumb: 52 Truths for Winning at Business Without Losing Yourself”. It’s written by Alan Webber, one of the co-founders of Fast Company magazine. It looked like a quick read, ideal for an afternoon in the sun. Well, it wasn’t a quick read at all. It could have been but I enjoyed it enough that I found myself stopping fairly...
Read MoreNumeracy Skills are Undervalued
I believe that the most important attribute for any business person to possess is great communication skills. However, this is followed closely by numeracy skills. Numeracy is defined as “the ability to use numbers, especially in arithmetical operations”. Communication and numeracy skills are very different in that there is a very broad range of communications skills but with numeracy, it has been my experience that you are either strong in this area or you aren’t. Here’s an...
Read MoreThe Opposable Mind
The Opposable Mind was written by Roger Martin, Dean of the Rotman School of Management at York University. The book’s premise is that small minority of business leaders think in a very unique manner compared to their peers and this manner of thinking is what Martin coins Integrative Thinking. These leaders, when confronted with a problem, are unlikely to settle for a solution that requires trade-offs when compared to the other available solutions. He likens this approach to choosing...
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