Reading Time: 2 minIf you have an important decision to make, considering whether you’d want it published in the newspaper can be a good way to frame it for yourself. Even if it’s a personal, private decision, thinking about how others could interpret it can be a valuable thinking exercise. In the book “The Personal MBA“, author Josh […]
Leadership
No decision can be 100%
Reading Time: < 1 minDecision-making can be a tricky thing, in a number of ways. First, you have the issue of determining when you have enough information to make a solid decision. As Josh Kaufman said in The Personal MBA, “no decision, large or small, is ever made with complete information“. How do you even know what “complete information” […]
Data beats Modal Bias
Reading Time: < 1 minThe concept of “modal bias” is simply the thought that our idea or approach is best. We all think that, but it can become much more troublesome when a HiPPO (the highest paid person in a meeting) falls into that trap and we all need to follow it. Once a HiPPO thinks they have the […]
All feedback is just data – right?
Reading Time: 2 minI was recently reading David Bradford’s book “Connect“, and I came across an interesting statement: Feedback can elicit strong emotions, especially when it contains a grain of truth, but there’s no such thing has “constructive” or “negative” feedback – all feedback is just data. My first thought was that I didn’t agree. While the core […]
Absence Blindness rewards drama
Reading Time: < 1 minAbsence Blindness is a cognitive bias that prevents us from identifying what we can’t observe. It seems pretty obvious — if we can’t observe something, of course we’ll be blind to it. That shouldn’t always be the case, though, and absence Blindness can lead to two problems. First is the lack of ability to “do […]
Precision versus intent
Reading Time: 2 minIf your role in your company involves managing other people, you can ask for work to be done by providing precise instructions or providing the intent behind them. Assuming you trust people to do the job, proper intent will save you both a lot of time. In “The Personal MBA“, author Josh Kaufman shares the […]
Humans versus output
Reading Time: < 1 minI’ve talked about empathy on this blog quite a lot, and the idea is simple — it’s the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. I see it as “walking in their shoes”, and trying to see the world from their perspective. When it comes to business, Simon Sinek has a very simple […]
Delegate and Elevate
Reading Time: 2 minWe’re big fans of the EOS (“Entrepreneurial Operating System”) model of business at GreenMellen, and it’s served us well over the years. We don’t follow it precisely, but some aspects of it (like meeting cadences and clarity breaks) have been astoundingly helpful for us. EOS founder Gino Wickman has a variety of books on leadership, […]
Trust versus expectations
Reading Time: 2 minI’ve always considered myself a trusting person, perhaps to a fault. Trust is good, but unearned trust can lead to trouble. That’s why I was surprised a few weeks ago when our team was working through some DISC testing that it showed I wasn’t particularly trusting. Similar to the Enneagram (or any kind of personality […]
A key for when you should fire a client
Reading Time: < 1 minOver the years, we’ve fired perhaps a half-dozen clients at GreenMellen. Most of those were for a wonderful reason — they grew too large for us to adequately support, so we passed them along to other local agencies that were much larger than us and could serve their needs. A few times, though, we let […]