Reading Time: 2 min If your role in your company involves managing other people, you can ask for work to be done by providing precise instructions or providing the intent behind them. Assuming you trust people to do the job, proper intent will save you both a lot of time. In “The Personal MBA“, author Josh Kaufman shares the […]
Leadership
Humans versus output
Reading Time: < 1 min I’ve talked about empathy on this blog quite a lot, and the idea is simple — it’s the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. I see it as “walking in their shoes”, and trying to see the world from their perspective. When it comes to business, Simon Sinek has a very simple […]
Delegate and Elevate
Reading Time: 2 min We’re big fans of the EOS (“Entrepreneurial Operating System”) model of business at GreenMellen, and it’s served us well over the years. We don’t follow it precisely, but some aspects of it (like meeting cadences and clarity breaks) have been astoundingly helpful for us. EOS founder Gino Wickman has a variety of books on leadership, […]
Trust versus expectations
Reading Time: 2 min I’ve always considered myself a trusting person, perhaps to a fault. Trust is good, but unearned trust can lead to trouble. That’s why I was surprised a few weeks ago when our team was working through some DISC testing that it showed I wasn’t particularly trusting. Similar to the Enneagram (or any kind of personality […]
A key for when you should fire a client
Reading Time: < 1 min Over the years, we’ve fired perhaps a half-dozen clients at GreenMellen. Most of those were for a wonderful reason — they grew too large for us to adequately support, so we passed them along to other local agencies that were much larger than us and could serve their needs. A few times, though, we let […]
Bring me problems
Reading Time: < 1 min A common leadership adage is to say to staff “don’t bring me problems, bring me solutions”. At first glance, it’s a wise thing to request. Digging deeper, though, I’m not so sure. I see two ways this thinking doesn’t always work. Solve It Together First is the issue of trying to have one person come […]
Don’t have all of the answers; have all of the questions
Reading Time: < 1 min At the end of most episodes of Seth Godin’s Akimbo podcast, they run an ad for the altMBA that includes a great line from T.K. Coleman that includes the quip that “there is no great thought leader who can outthink the internet“. While I personally work hard to have many answers available in my head, […]
You don’t have to have all of the answers if you’re willing to learn
Reading Time: < 1 min It’s tempting to try to have the answer for every question, and it’s admittedly something I fall into myself. It’s kind of like the idea of “proving versus improving“, and trying to be an expert on everything. You don’t need to try to do that. It can take a degree of humility to know you […]
Speed shouldn’t be a measure for untimed roles
Reading Time: < 1 min At the time of this writing, we’re looking to hire a new Web Support Manager at GreenMellen. We’re taking candidates through a fairly typical interview process, but speed is not a major factor in this. We certainly want to respond quickly to our clients, but if someone doesn’t have an answer to a question right […]
What do you think?
Reading Time: < 1 min I’ve had a bad habit over the years that my team has rightfully called me out on, and it’s one that I’m trying to break. I’ll find an interesting article and send it to one of them and simply ask them “thoughts?”. That’s not helpful. Richard Millington recently had a great post where he unpacked […]