How Much Imperfection Can We Live With?
I’ve been thinking about perfection these days. As a society, we seem to want it all. We want everything open. We don’t discriminate between schools and airplanes. And, several people…
Read moreHow Do We Create Culture?
We often talk about a few “bad apples” in teams, groups, or even society as a whole. We use the term “bad apples” because that metaphor helps us see that…
Read moreAre You Playing a Finite or an Infinite Game?
In these COVID times, some people think they need to play zero-sum games. Those games are the ones where “I win, you lose.” While we might win short-term, we often…
Read moreHow Do We Operate When We Can’t See the Finish Line?
Right now, in July 2020, we have several problems: COVID-19 the disease, the effect of the virus on our economy, and a reckoning of our culture. Each problem shares a…
Read moreWhen Do We Choose the Social Contract & When Do We Choose the Economic Contract?
We operate at various levels in our families, work, and society. We have shortcut names for these behaviors: the economic contract and the social contract. When we use the economic…
Read moreHow Can You Create Boundaries?
As I connect with various colleagues and friends who now work from home, they all say the same thing. “I’m always working. I work all day and all night. The…
Read moreHow Resilient is Your Family?
As we live through the COVID-19 pandemic, we see cracks in how we support our partners and loved ones. Some couples divide the work so that only one of the…
Read moreWhen Is the Right Time to Solve This Problem?
Will They Miss Me When I’m Gone?
I read Dwayne Phillips’ One of the Ultimate Compliments at Work and started thinking about being indispensable. I wonder if people want to be indispensable or if they want to…
Read moreHow Do You Want to Be in the World?
I like years that end in zero or five. I think of these years as bookends. A nice way to wrap the previous years and to start the next year(s).…
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