Month: March 2012

Task, Process, and the Quest for Business Improvement

Mar 13, 2012adminBusiness Improvement, Leadership Development

A client recently sent over an essay from the January 30th issue of the New Yorker entitled “Groupthink – The Brainstorming Myth,” by Jonah Lehrer. Here’s the link: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/01/30/120130fa_fact_lehrer Having worked before together, and knowing my approach, he wondered what I thought. The nut of Lehrer’s argument is that brainstorming doesn’t work – for unleashing the creative power of teams. Brainstorming was first popularized in the 1940’s by Alex Osborn, then a partner in the highly regarded advertising agency BBDO, and today it’s still used widely across the business spectrum. Lehrer sites a 1958 Yale University study which compared the […]

Lost Opportunities and Long Term Success

I recently lost an opportunity to another consultant. It’s always painful. Frankly it doesn’t happen all that often that we’re in direct competition with other advisors. Greater are the threats of the status quo, fear of change, and general complacency in the client organization. Our strongest competitors are the client acting alone, or worse, not acting at all. Losing a new project opportunity, and more importantly a new relationship opportunity, always disappoints. What’s more, I’m usually caught off guard – I just don’t see it coming. (I know this doesn’t make sense. We’re not going to win them all, and […]