PPAR – Four Words that Drive Success
originally published March 2008
With just four words, you can change your day.
Poise, precision, audacity, resolve.
Joe Raasch :: Jul.29.2010 :: Change Management, Leadership :: Add a Comment Here
Artistic Immortality in 20 Steps
originally published January 23, 2007
As part of my 2007 goals, I signed up for a beginner’s art class at a local art academy. I don’t see myself especially gifted as an artist, so I figured this would be a great way to find out how right I am.
Guess what? There is a process to drawing! It isn’t just trance-like inspiration. The master artists, Cezanne, Picasso, Calder; they all started with drawing. It is the beginning, the genesis of all great paintings and sculpture. I learned more in that two hours than in the past two decades about lines, angles, apathy (danger!), and perfection.
1. Relax
2. Concentrate
3. Draw lightly
4. Big shapes first
5. Compare back & forth
6. Turn it upside down
7. Find mistakes
8. Put arrows down (next to mistakes)
9. Turn it right side up
10. Correct mistakes
11. Erase arrows
12. Check positive & negative shapes
13. Correct mistakes
14. Stop & rest
15. Check it again
16. Correct mistakes
17. Raise your hand & ask for help
18. Ghost your line
19. Add details
20. Ask for help one last time
Perfection, as defined in art, is ‘done right’. Perfection in business tends to go down the road of ‘analysis paralysis’ or delays to a product launch while everyone worries about getting everything “perfect”. This isn’t what we’re focused on.
As our instructor mentioned, “Everything you draw or paint, it should be able to be displayed. Work on it until you’ve perfected it. Apathy is your enemy. There are a lot of crummy painters out there. You don’t have to be one of them.”
There is a fine line between being ‘perfect’ and ‘doing it right’ – and I am 20 steps closer to that line.
Joe Raasch :: Jul.12.2010 :: Innovation, Life, Personal :: Add a Comment Here
What Do We Do Now?
Originally publish 10/4/2009
It had to happen. Your organization is faced with a set of circumstances no one can remember dealing with in the past. The veterans with decades at the table, the new ones with experience in other organizations, the recent MBA or PhD. So now what?
“Sometime over the next decade your company will be challenged to change in a way for which it has no precedent.”
- Gary Hamel, from The Future of Management
Duck and Cover
One approach is to do nothing. This is the easy option. A sort of, “this too shall pass” theory. If the organization waits long enough, the bad (economy, competition, revenue projection, etc.) will just up and go away. I hope those organizations didn’t pay a consultant for that strategy…
Tried and True
Maybe your organization has tons, literally, of three-ring binders full of documented processes, procedures and protocols to assist in managing the pending change. This work is what keeps your organization on track today, and will support it during times of change. Why look at anything else? Time to pull out the Change Book and get about the business of changing. GE used to do this. Their strategy was to be #1 or #2 in every market, or fix/close the business. Eventually, revenue became stagnant because GE was #1 or #2 in every market they participated in. What to do? Stay #1? Sure. And…make sure that you have no more than 10% of the share of that market. That wasn’t in the original playbook…
Tried and True is a good foundation to build on What Is Next.
What Is Next?
Managers and Leaders: two different jobs, right? The leaders sets the strategy and the manager makes it happen. What if everyone was a leader? Or everyone was a manager? Or…are these similar roles, all pushing the same rock uphill? Should managers and leaders be working side-by-side to set strategy and execute with fidelity? Hmmm…
_______________
How is your organization facing the new world order? Tried and true, innovation, or duck and cover?
Joe Raasch :: Jun.26.2010 :: Change Management, Employee Engagement, Leadership, Performance Management :: Add a Comment Here