Work on Your Weaknesses...Sometimes.

Growing up, we are often taught that talent is rare. We grade and rank our performance. We vote for “most likely to succeed”. We hear the value of being the best of the best. All of this serves to [...]

A decade ago, when we formed People Centric Consulting Group, we decided to implement a strange policy that was not widely used at the time. We installed an “open time off” policy. Essentially, this [...]

We recently helped a client analyze a survey they had conducted trying to understand what benefits and activities were valued most by their employees. This particular company worked very hard on its [...]

The words “leader” and “manager” are often used interchangeably, but they are very different words. Many organizations refer to their executive team as their “leadership team”. Some call us and ask [...]

Anyone who has ever attended school knows that humans live in a constant state of conflict. The conflict is between a natural desire for all of us to be part of the village and our natural desire to [...]

When I was at 3M, I was assigned to a team to look at the quality and profitability of a longtime product. When the team leader assembled the team, he quickly learned that many of the operators [...]

One of the most challenging skill sets of any good manager is delegation. We often hear even experienced managers talk about how it is just easier to do it yourself than to delegate work to another [...]

When I was about 4 years old, my parents purchased a Kimball piano. This was a major purchase for a young family living on a teacher’s salary, but my parents saw that I had some natural musical [...]

A long time ago, I worked with someone who was clearly not doing their job. They were regularly missing deadlines and their quality of work was so poor that everyone around them often had to redo it. [...]