Engagement and The Boss – a Haiku
I was reading Dan Rockwell’s twitter feed, looking for some ideas to help frame up our new revision of the Seven Seas Quest team building game and thought to reframe one of his… Continue reading
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How can we impact workplace performance and innovation?
How can we impact workplace performance? Perspective and Teamwork. The consideration of New Possibilities. Active engagement and active involvement with innovation. Implementation, (at last in many cases). And continuous continuous improvement. Captured in… Continue reading
Thinking Agile, for MoreBetterFaster Improvements
GapingVoid had a nice image distributed through email with text that got me thinking about Square Wheels® and Agile Thinking that I reframed into my scheme of things. Their focus was on business… Continue reading
Too Busy to Improve?
There is a lot of background around this new poster, and a few different versions of things. But the basic idea is about how ideas are handled. Here, a person (an outsider, an… Continue reading
Thoughts on Knowledge and Thinking
A reality is that ALL of us know more than ANY of us, and we are often blind to new ideas because we are so invested and embedded in the old paradigms. Sometimes,… Continue reading
Leadership: Playing The Fool
ASKING for ideas is a powerful way to drive active involvement and participative learning within a workgroup. It can build teamwork and peer pressure for improvement and the reality is that asking is… Continue reading
Take the Time Needed to Change and Improve
It is oft-said that Time changes Things, and maybe there is some truth to that. The notion of entropy says that things eventually reduce themselves. But in the case of real people doing… Continue reading
Round Today, Square Tomorrow
The Big Idea is Continuous Continuous Improvement, because what works smoothly today will invariably not work as well in the future. The keys include perspective, collaboration and teamwork to implement and adjust those… Continue reading
Dream to fly or dream to dream? On Caterpillars and Butterflies
I was looking for something else and came across this old line art poster when I did a lot of work on managing and leading change. I thought it was a good one!… Continue reading
Thinking about Thinking
There are all kinds of “contemplation figures” out there. I thought to add one more, this one around possibilities. Your thoughts? One needs to stop pushing and pulling, or at least ask… Continue reading
Don’t Just DO Something! Stand There… A Square Wheels Poster
Instead of our usual poem or haiku or quote offering, this post shares one of the Square Wheels Poster Images, something you can download and print. The message is clear, whether it is… Continue reading
A Coaching Haiku around Round Wheels
I’m going to be completing a complete redo of our Coaching Tools toolkit soon, one that embeds a series of our LEGO® Square Wheels® scenes and themes. So, I thought to warm up… Continue reading
Business Haiku on Motivation and Teamwork
The View at the Front of the Wagon is a very different one than The View at the Back of the Wagon. There is that old quote that if you don’t know where… Continue reading
“My Team, My Team” – a poem on teamwork
Teamwork is an important thing in most organizations. But “Interdepartmental Collaboration” remains an oxymoron, too. Most managers do not collaborate because their measurement systems are not aligned to measure collaborative results and bonuses… Continue reading
Motivating the Spectator Sheep, or “Things are not always how they appear”
Spectator Sheep express themselves with Naaaaaa’s and Baaaaaa’s when asked about things in the workplace. They are most certainly not involved and engaged and they are often not moving in the same direction… Continue reading
The Desk – a place to think — a Poem done in the Dr. Seuss style
Just a thought about how things could work better in some workplaces. We need to think about more possibilities, for sure: For the… Continue reading
A Business Planning Square Wheels Haiku
The seasons change and we need to be individually and collectively prepared. But are we preparing with the right approach? Consider: One might think that a collective approach involving the participants might generate,… Continue reading
Team Implementation Square Wheels Haiku
A simply haiku about people and performance, teamwork and collaboration. For the FUN of It! Dr. Scott Simmerman is a designer of team building games and organization improvement tools. Managing Partner of Performance Management Company since… Continue reading
Organizational Alignment, LEGO, Square Wheels and Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine
I thought a crazy title might catch your eye and I guess it did! Organizational Alignment is critical for organizational efficiency and effectiveness, but most organizations are NOT aligned and most people find… Continue reading
The Round Wheels of Change – a business haiku
Change is always an interesting process. So is innovation and creativity. Communications is such a critical factor. How are you doing with YOUR workplace communications and engagement? For the FUN of It! Dr. Scott… Continue reading
Balance in the workplace – a poem
Thought you might like this simple view: Managing people and performance IS a juggling act, and there are always things that can be improved. But there are also number of factors that simply… Continue reading
A Desk is a Dangerous Place from which to view the world…
John LeCarre said in one of his books, “A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world.” And most of us would certainly agree with that assessment. I would add… Continue reading
“My Team, My Team, My Team.”
The dynamic balance of collaboration and competition exists in most organizations, with the reality being that some teams are collaborative and some teams are competitive and some teams are a bit of both.… Continue reading
Irish Prayer about People and Performance
Twenty five years ago, at least, I came across The Irish Prayer. I saw it again recently, in somewhat different form so I thought to share it reframed again. Sometimes, the apparent limping… Continue reading
The Ditch. The Road. Your Choice
Leading teams is about communications and shared missions and goals. Too often, wagon pushers are not involved and engaged nor do they have a clear sense of where they are going. The reality… Continue reading
YOUR Value, your BOSS, and your Team
How do we value ourselves and our contribution to the team? It is a reasonable question that each of us need to ask every day. Note that your personal contributions to your team… Continue reading
Team Building Success – The Stairway Model
Heavy drinking last night must have given me the idea of The Stairway Model of Team Building Success. You be the judge… The Stairway Model develops from the Escalator Model, which was built… Continue reading
Business Haiku on Downhill Journeys and Square Wheels
Understanding the Lay of the Land is important, and also the reality of the journey forward. If all you do is pull, all you will see is forward. And while that might have… Continue reading
Business Haiku on Motivation and Employee Engagement
Ah, The Slackers! Let’s put the blame on the people for not being motivated, right? After all, the workplace itself must be motivating since at least one of our people seems motivated every… Continue reading
Business Haiku on Engagement and Discontent
Possibilities and Potential. Ah, if we could only get there from here… I continue to think that improving active involvement and generating some positive Disruptive Engagement are pretty straightforward, at least insofar as… Continue reading
Success takes care of itself?
There was a Henry Ford quote that clanged with me so I popped it into my Square Wheels powerpoint master file and came up with an image for discussion. So, I got this:… Continue reading
Business Haiku on Strategy Execution
How DO we make progress and execute our strategy initiatives? Well, communications and engagement are certainly key issues. Perspective and the sharing of visions and goals is also necessary. Implementing strategy is a… Continue reading
How much is the ball? A team building opportunity
In his book, “Thinking, Fast and Slow,” Daniel Kahneman posts up a most excellent question that I share below. My thought was to add a bit of reality about organizational issues and opportunities,… Continue reading
Business Haiku – Working Hard and Making Progress
Here are two new Haiku sprung from my newer Square Wheels images about how organizations really work. Your thoughts? If you have needs for more teamwork to generate better business outcomes, consider that… Continue reading
Monday or Wednesday, what is the difference?
My friend Brian Remer posted up a blog on creativity and used a metaphor of bicycle riding and showed a brain with a bike. Cute. And it got me to send him back… Continue reading
Workplace Happiness – YOU Choose!
Yes, “work” can and does get old, especially when you choose to do the same things for the same reasons with the same results, day after day and week after week. On the… Continue reading
The Paradox of Images and LEGO and construction
We working hard to illustrate a big bunch of things from my Square Wheels themes and quotes collections and to build a lot of scenes into my Lost Dutchman team building game. But,… Continue reading
Thoughts on Questions – a quote on patience
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves.” is a quote from the poet Ranier Maria Rilke It speaks to the issues of being… Continue reading
Learning is a Round Wheels Treasure
Here’s a Chinese Proverb about LEARNING that is also about perceptual acuity and perspective, collaboration, engagement, empowerment and all that stuff. The key is to spend a minute in silent reflection / meditation… Continue reading
New Year Resolutions in Month Eight
It is August. How are you doing on your resolutions to improve your workplace now that it is Month Eight? There is still time to get things done more better faster. For… Continue reading
Learn to See – Da Vinci and Square Wheels of Connectedness and Engagement
I read this quote from Leonardo da Vinci and checked it for authenticity and then popped it into the context of organizational improvement. I am guessing that his workplaces in his times were… Continue reading
Positive Disruptive Engagement – a Definition
We need to better involve and engage people in our workplaces, and we cannot do that by implementing another survey or continuing to do things the same way. We need to Free The… Continue reading
Business Haiku on Improvement and Square Wheels
Joan and I sit here looking at stuff and she wanted me to update a haiku and post it up, so she can see the process. Hope you like this one! Let’s Get… Continue reading
Disruptive Engagement – Bad Policies need Perspective
This relates to a blog I posted up about really lousy customer service from the Taylors’ Branch of the Greenville SC Library System. I was shocked at the extraordinarily tight security on checking… Continue reading
Zen Thinking on Workplace Motivation
I thought you might like this one: We are constantly talking about motivation and leadership and how to involve and engage people, to empower them and to generate improved performance. But there must… Continue reading
Business Haiku on Thumpy Wheeling and Positive Disruptive Engagement
How DO we get things rolling to improve empowerment and engagement? Probably by DIS-un-empowerment and DIS-un-engagement practiced by the workplace supervisor. Who else will impact the people and change the way things work?… Continue reading
Da Vinci quote about Square Wheels and possibilities
Not sure that Leonardo had the Square Wheels wagon specifically in mind when he said this, but maybe… For the FUN of It! Dr. Scott Simmerman is a designer of team building games and organization… Continue reading
Consider The Gap – the issues between ideas and implementation
“Change is Good. You go first,” was one of the quotes in The Dilbert Principle, a book on business principles and organizational improvement by Scott Adams. And there is something to be said… Continue reading
Choose or Lose – a Business Haiku on Disruptive Engagement
Supervisors have to make Big Choices, every hour of every day. And one thing that seems to be missing, based on zillions of surveys, is their effective motivation of their people and their… Continue reading
Business Haiku on Making Progress with Square Wheels
The Round Wheels are already in the wagon, and people can easily discover that. But sometimes they need outside inspiration or a challenge to really understand that they need to do things #morebetterfaster… Continue reading