Rodger Dean Duncan's Blog, page 15
February 12, 2020
Your Assumptions About ‘Motivation’ Could Be Wrong
Corporate hallways and lunchrooms are often festooned with “motivational” wall posters. The idea seems to be that clichés enhance comradeship and performance.
Military drill instructors scream at recruits, apparently assuming that insults and humiliation are inspiring.
Motivation can come from many sources.
A tyrannical manager may “motivate” people to work killer hours that ruin health and family life and actually jeopardize productivity.
Alternatively, a thoughtful leader can...
January 26, 2020
What We Can (Still) Learn From Jim Lehrer
Occasionally we run across someone whose example helps guide us for the rest of our lives.
For me, one such person was Jim Lehrer.
To millions of people, Jim was the face of the PBS NewsHour where he was anchor for more than three decades. Others will remember him as the moderator of a dozen presidential debates, an experience he once described as “walking down the blade of a knife.”
The less public Jim is the one I remember. More than 50 years ago he was city editor of the Dallas...
January 22, 2020
Do Distractions Wreck Your Day? Here’s a Smart Fix
If you’re like most people, you occasionally (often?) wish you had more time. Meanwhile, you’re stuck with the same clock and calendar as everyone else.
Personal productivity is among the most perplexing challenges facing people everywhere.
It needn’t be. In fact, our personal productivity can become one of the most satisfying ingredients of our lives. But to make it so, we must pay better attention to our attention.
No, that’s not a typo. We must pay better attention to our...
January 16, 2020
Stressed? Maybe Rest Can Be Your New Hustle
Paula Rizzo was sitting at her desk at Fox News Channel in New York City when she felt a dull pain below her belly button. Like many hard-charging people might do, she ignored it. After all, she was busy. She had a demanding job as a senior TV producer. She had obligations as a wife, daughter, and friend. She had no time for a stomachache.
Two days later she was in the hospital ER. Her appendix had burst, spreading bacteria like a toxic cluster bomb. She could have died.
Rather than...
January 9, 2020
6 Practices To Help You Be A Better Manager
Are you a first-level leader? Do you manage a team of individual contributors who don’t have direct reports of their own?
Then you know some of the challenges of making the leap to management.
You really want to be a good manager, but your training for that role may be light or even non-existent. You really want your team to succeed, but you may not have the resources and support you’d like.
My best advice? Avoid the temptation of trying to do too much at once. Focus on a handful of...
Six Practices To Help You Be A Better Manager
Are you a first-level leader? Do you manage a team of individual contributors who don’t have direct reports of their own?
Then you know some of the challenges of making the leap to management.
You really want to be a good manager, but your training for that role may be light or even non-existent. You really want your team to succeed, but you may not have the resources and support you’d like.
My best advice? Avoid the temptation of trying to do too much at once. Focus on a handful of...
January 1, 2020
Airbnb Can Teach Your Business A Thing Or Two
We live in the age of disruptors. We have one in the White House, and we have multiple examples throughout the business world.
Illustrations of the latter were scrawled on a whiteboard a while back by Alberto Brea, chief growth strategist at a New York marketing firm.
Here’s what Brea wrote—
Amazon did not kill the retail industry. They did it to themselves with bad customer service. Netflix did not kill Blockbuster. They did it to themselves with ridiculous late fees. Uber did not...December 24, 2019
Try This Bite-Sized Approach To Personal Improvement
Achieving personal goals can be as frustrating as trying to nail Jello to a wall.
Lose weight? Get more sleep? Exercise daily? Take a dream vacation? Improve a relationship? Earn a promotion? Read more books? Watch less TV? Cut back on social media? Save more money? Spend less?
The list can go on. Set a worthy goal, then fail to achieve it. Honestly, most of us have been there, done that.
Rather than buy a ticket for another guilt trip, how about taking a different approach?
That “...
November 29, 2019
Why Accountability Is All About Explicit Behaviors
Reinforcing accountability can be surprisingly simple.
Accountability is all about performance, and performance is all about behaviors.
In fact, the overall performance in your organization—in every conversation, in every meeting, in every project, in every activity of every kind—is the result of behaviors.
So doesn’t it make sense to focus on behaviors?
In organizations where personal accountability for performance is highest, behaviors are not left to chance. In...
October 31, 2019
Bridging the Gap to Reach the ‘Why’ Generation
In many situations, the smartest questions you can ask will begin with the word “why.”
Think about that. Have you noticed the inquisitiveness of young children? As long as they’re encouraged to do so, they seem to ask questions endlessly. They want to know how things work. They want to know the purpose of things. They want to know why. And their thirst for knowledge and understanding accelerates their learning.
In countless workplaces over the years I’ve noticed that new hires often ask the best questions: Why i...
