Clippings

Posts for Tag: d27tm

What bunker mentality and management can do to an organization.

Q. So what did you learn about large corporations?

A. Two really key things. One was that insecurity is incredibly damaging in a corporate environment. You end up making really poor decisions, a lot of things you do are based on fear, and eventually it will fail. When people are playing defense and they’re primarily focused on their own jobs, it ultimately ends up being a sort of losing strategy.

The second thing is that there’s a lot of time wasted in conversations that don’t happen face-to-face. When there are backroom conversations and dealings — as opposed to direct conversations — it’s less efficient and you get poorer outcomes. People could spend weeks building these political coalitions rather than just having a direct conversation.

via nytimes.com

The observation about back-room dealing rang true in my working life and still rings true for me today. I'd like to know whether the formal leaders of District 27 Toastmasters are aware of their members' needs and if they even care about them.

Seth Godin's blog added to our links

Mornings don't feel quite right to me unless I check in with Seth Godin. He provides regular, insightful blog posts that always get me thinking and usually find me agreeing. I think he was right on the mark this morning and entertaining as well with this post about Powerpoint and bullets.

The US Army reports that misuse of Powerpoint (in other words, using Powerpoint the way most people use it, the way it was designed to be used) is a huge issue.

I first wrote a popular short free ebook about this seven years ago and the problem hasn't gone away. So much for the power of the idea.

Here's the problem:

  • Bullets appear to be precise
    • They define the scope of the issue, even if they are wrong
    • They are definitive, even if they aren't
  • Bullets that are read from the screen go in one ear and out the other
  • Bullets are used as a defensive measure
    • see, I told you this in the meeting on 12.3.08
  • Bullets are unemotional and sterile
  • The lizard brain causes us to make presentations that are too long so that nothing in particular gets commented on or remembered or criticized
  • It is harder to interrupt and have a conversation with someone who has a clicker

See what I mean?

If there was any other tool as widely misused in your organization, you'd ban it. The cost is enormous in lost opportunity and lost time. Guns don't kill people, bullets do.

via sethgodin.typepad.com
And not long after I had seen the post I got a message from District Governor Lesko saying that this would be a pretty good post for the whole District to see. It wasn't the first time John had made his appreciation of Seth's writing known to me. In fact he wrote about yesterday's post, titled The Paralysis of Unlimited Opportunity

There aren't just a few options open to you, there are thousands (or more).

You can spend your marketing money in more ways than ever, live in more places while still working electronically, contact different people, launch different initiatives, hire different freelancers... You can post your ideas in dozens of ways, interact with millions of people, launch any sort of product or service without a permit or factory.

Too many choices.

If it's thrilling to imagine the wide open spaces, go for it.

If it's slowing you down and keeping you up at night, consider artificially limiting your choices. Don't get on planes. Don't do spec work. Don't work for jerks. Work on paper, not on film. Work on film, not on video. Don't work weekends.

Whatever rule you want...

But no matter what, don't do nothing.

John added "I'm always amazed and overjoyed when people do what they say they'll do. I'm down right tickled when folks accomplish 50-percent of their club DCP goals (that makes them distinguished if there's a net gain of 5 members over the club's base)."

So, I've added a link to Seth's posts in the blogroll here so you can check his blog on your own. But don't be surprised if you see him mentioned here again.