Strategic Serendipity

If you've been on social media the past 24 hours you've seen the infamous page from the April Issue of Self Magazine.  Check them out here .  You may have even seen the half-hearted, tongue-in-cheek apology from the magazine's Editor-in-Chief.  Opinions are flaring and some are siding with the magazine and some are siding with the women pictured in the article and their company Glam Runner.  For the record, I am very strongly on the side of the women pictured and very offended by the article, regardless of whether Ms. Allen was a cancer survivor.  Here's the point the magazine has missed entirely up to this point - sometimes just starting the race or just finishing the race is a major accomplishment.  If people want to put on "armor" to face a challenge like a tutu, face-paint, custom t-shirt, etc. who cares?  Not everything is about being the fastest or being first or being stylish.  Unless you are magazine for marathon winners, you probably want...

Employees or volunteers - it doesn't matter one bit when you are dealing with the concept of engagement.  Why?  As Stephen Covey said, "You can buy a person's hands, but you can't buy his heart.  His heart is where his enthusiasm, his loyalty is." In other words, you can make someone come to work and do a specified set of tasks through the "carrot" of a paycheck.  Getting a person to go that extra step, however, requires enthusiasm and loyalty, engagement and value alignment, and a core belief that the people with whom you are working have more to offer than the completion of the specified task list in your mind.  Without these you just have a body in a seat.  In the work world this is nicely described as disengagement, sometimes referred to as retired-in-place, and can lead to passive sabotage.  In the volunteer world it will usually lead to loss of volunteers.  In both realms, keeping people and keeping them productive requires keeping their ...

From Dan Rockwell @Leadershipfreak (well actually from his wife via his blog)..." People who already know can't be taught ."  The whole blog piece is hilarious but I wanted to focus a bit on the serious side of the message. Let's start with the big question I hear so often.  "Are leaders made or taught?"  My opinion is that some people have an innate understanding of leadership concepts in the way that some people have an innate understand of how to throw a baseball or play a guitar.  It is easier for them to learn and master but they still have to practice if they want to make it to the big time.  For the rest of the world, there are thousands of models, books, courses, blogs, podcasts, etc. (if not millions by now) to help them learn what the others seem to innately know.  But it is like going to a piano lesson, if you don't go home after the lesson and practice, you might as well not go at all. In other words, true leaders master their craft thr...

When I started working for non-profits twenty years ago, the guiding principle for everything was "Would we be embarrassed if this ended up on the front of the Washington Post?"  It is a simple rule, but it works. Let's face it, there are times when you can explain why you are doing something with very logical, rational, productive, and economic reasons and so you feel like it might be okay to go ahead.  Honestly, my rule is even if I can explain something I do not want to put my organization in the place of needing to explain anything.  If I have to explain it for people to understand, it probably is not the "right" course of action. So why are we seeing so many things on the front of the Washington Post that are embarrassing to individuals and organizations?  Do they not know about this simple rule?  Or is sheer fear for organizational survival (and individuals to survive in an organization) pushing people away from this rule? Think about your staff. ...

The teen years are the years you prepare for the rest of your life. You start driving, and get a part-time job. As a teen, it is important to have fun because you will never have so much un-preoccupied time again. But it is also important to learn and develop skills you will need for life.  One skill is leading. At some point, you going to have to be a leader, whether it be for a study group, a sales project, or a sports team.  Leadership is a very important trait to have. Take every other great character trait you know and put it together. Confidence, responsibility, kindness, fairness, empathy, courage, respectfulness, it is all needed to create a good leader.  As a good leader, you also have to know how to deal with mistakes. Everyone is human, and you have to learn to improvise when things get tough. You just have to strive to be your best, in spite of the hurdles. And to me, that’s what leadership really is. Editor's Note: BV is a teenager so personal informa...