What is excellence? Seriously, what does it mean to be excellent at anything – at a sport; at an artistic endeavor; in business? Excellence is a tough thing to define – kind of “I’ll know it when I see it” type thing. Merriam Webster says excellence “is the quality of being outstanding or extremely good,” […]
Continue ReadingLessons from a 16-Year-Old Intern: What NOT to do in Business – Aug 2021
[Our Back to the Future trivia results are at the end of my column, including announcing the winner of a free ticket to PENworks 2021! Read on!] So my daughter finished her summer internship last week – an office job in an accounting/finance department of a midsize business, and her first “real job” outside of […]
Continue ReadingGetting Back to the Future: Lessons from the Classic Movie (& the Theme of PENworks 2021) – July 2021
It’s summer. So this month’s column will be a little more whimsical than normal, focusing on the themes and hidden meanings of the 80s classic trilogy Back to the Future. Why in the world a 36-year-old movie?! Well, after 16 months of constant challenges, we all greatly desire to move forward to a better, brighter […]
Continue ReadingOvercoming Today’s Staffing Challenges: Recruiting, Retention, Redesign – June 2021
Last weekend was Father’s Day, so in honor of, my wife and two kids were going to treat me to a brunch – nothing noteworthy (although emerging from pandemic, any visit to a restaurant these days is noteworthy). We tried one of our favorite places in south Minneapolis, but found a sign on the door […]
Continue ReadingLearning from the Future: How to Plan for Tomorrow When Everything Has Changed Today – May 2021
This is the first year in PEN’s 34-year history without a budget. Probably like many of you reading this, our normal process is a board planning retreat every October, followed by the creation and approval of a plan and budget in November-December. But last November-December was literally the height of the pandemic in the US, […]
Continue ReadingNever Waste a Good Crisis: 10 Leadership Lessons from the Last Year – April 2021
Never waste a good crisis. Winston Churchill was credited in first using that phrase toward the end of World War II, and there’s some real wisdom in the statement: if you’re experiencing challenging times, you might as well learn and benefit from them to emerge stronger “on the other side.” After all, life’s biggest lessons […]
Continue ReadingThe ROI of DEI: Still Much Work To Do – March 2021
It’s not often that I re-run an article (and it’s certainly not often that I rerun it within the same year). But the events of this month – the beginning of Derek Chauvin’s trial and the mass killing in Atlanta that targeted Asian Americans – along with a continued and growing recognition from business leaders […]
Continue ReadingThe Power of Why: How Asking the Right Questions Can Change the Future – Feb 2021
So last week I was in the grocery store (which, like many or most of us these days, represents the extraverted highlight of my week), and I overheard a young kid – maybe four or five years old – ask, who I assume was his mother, if he could get some cookies. She said no, […]
Continue ReadingStitched Together: Managing Your Organization as a System – Jan 2021
So last week we learned that the COVID-19 variant first discovered in the UK may, in fact, be more deadly than the original virus. (Don’t worry: this article is not about the pandemic.) I’m not a virologist, but to me, this is simply the virus mutating to try to sustain itself – to spread more […]
Continue ReadingBuilding More Resilient Organizations – Dec 2020
Organizations are built on processes (or at least should be) – they are a system of interconnected tasks, activities, and routines that guide employees (or technology) through decisions and procedures that produce products, services, or programs that are of value to customers or stakeholders. Simply put, organizations are a set of methods to get valuable […]
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