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- May 2010 — Put The Candle Back!
- April 2010 — Where There Is Nothing
- March 2010 — Who Needs Team Building?
- February 2010 — The Godot Effect
- January 2010 — 7 Things You Should Communicate
- December 2009 — Who's In Charge Here?
- November 2009 — Cut Loose the Anchors
- October 2009 — Don't Just Do Something, Stand There!
- September 2009 — We Multi-Task Here
- Suggestions
If you have a particular topic you would like to see addressed in a future newsletter, please email your suggestions to steve@7stepsahead.com.
August 2010 — The Perils of Perfection
Perfection is a funny thing. It seems like it should be a good thing if it could be achieved. During my years as a competitive fencer, though, I often noticed that the winners of the tournaments were rarely the fencers with the most perfect technique. Rather, the winner usually had some flaws in their technique. Oddly enough, those flaws didn't seem to matter. What mattered was that their areas of strength were strong enough. More broadly, it turns out that those Olympic athletes who strive to be perfect tend to do less well than those who strive to constantly do better.
July 2010 — The Hydrangea Conundrum
If you've been following the news recently, you've probably heard that, after the cancellation of the Rocky and Bullwinkle show, Boris and Natasha retired to Montclair, NJ. More specifically, the FBI announced the arrest of ten Russian spies whose mission appears to have been to infiltrate the PTA. At a certain level, the whole affair seems like a rather bizarre choice between putting together a deep-cover infiltration or having the New York Times delivered to your doorstep. What is particularly interesting, though, is the reaction of a neighbor of one of the accused spies:
"She couldn't be a spy. Look what she did with the hydrangeas!"
June 2010 — It's a Marathon!
Once upon a time there was a software company developing an innovative data management tool. When it started, everyone was excited about the product and eager to be part of such a novel project. Three years later, the software was on the market. Naturally, everyone was ecstatic and eager to buckle down and produce the next version.
Well, not exactly. Yes, the product was on the market; after that, the tale had an unhappy ending. Over time, all that energy and motivation steadily eroded, a result of poor planning, long hours, overly optimistic deadlines, interpersonal conflict, a bad habit of "motivating" by moving from crisis to crisis, and other stressors.
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