Early on in my career I took my first business trip to North Carolina where I participated in a ‘higher education’ conference. No, the conference wasn’t on the airplane although we were ‘higher’. Because it was North Carolina there was even a pig roast. Sadly, I couldn’t find an apple. To get from Vancouver to Winston-Salem, I took planes interconnected by the Star Alliance family – Air Canada and United Airlines – and since that trip I very rarely diverge from the family. I’m a loyal customer racking up (according to a recent personalized infographic sent to me by Air Canada’s loyalty program) over 2 million miles of business. Suffice to say that I’ve had a few apples in various lounges unlike Miss Piggy in
collaboration Archive
As it turns out, cycling is beginning to take over North America as an extra-curricular athletic hobby. According to the National Sporting Goods Association the number of Americans who ride bicycles is greater than all those who ski, golf, and play tennis combined. According to Outdoor Foundation there were 1.2 billion cycling outings in America in 2011 second only to jogging and running. This got me thinking about one of my favourite personal passions (cycling) and our corporate organizations. Maybe if we were to act like a peloton in our organizations, we might see higher levels of employee engagement. What’s a peloton? In cycling speak, it’s what a pack of cyclists are called when they ride together. Check out the photo to the right for
I’m not a very political man. You may even call me apolitical. I always vote, but I often vote based on the issues versus being tied to a political party. I’m politically Neapolitan. But that doesn’t mean I can’t tell you about a good story that involves Government, regardless of your or my political stripes. In my home province of British Columbia, Canada, there has been a program in place now — called IDEAS2ACTION — where citizens have been asked to get involved, submit ideas and help shape opportunities for skills development across the entire province. The process the Provincial Government followed is best summarized by the graphic found below: There have been over 125 ideas submitted and vetted, with a fantastic accompanying dashboard that
There are a lot of fools in our organizations today. Why else is employee engagement at deplorable levels? Why else do we see senior leaders failing to adopt social collaborative technologies inside (or outside) the organization? Why else do we see authoritative, autocratic, fear mongering and controlling leaders still operating in vast numbers? Why do we see information and knowledge hoarding? It’s because the people who act this way are fools. They have a fear of open leadership. They are the FOOL. (It’s an acronym) Work with me. In my book Flat Army: Creating a Connected and Engaged Organization I define open leadership as follows: “the act of engaging others to influence and execute a coordinated and harmonious conclusion” There are some key words and