Attention Is the Scarce Resource
Time management assumes hours are interchangeable. They are not. A leader with sixty available hours and four hours of genuine judgment has a different problem than…
Read →Idaho leadership
Leadership Lessons
Practical leadership lessons from experienced Idahoans across the state's industries, institutions, and communities — guidance you can apply in your own work.
Praise and Its Inflation
Recognition is a currency and it inflates the same way any other does. A leader who praises everything has not made people feel valued; they have…
Read →Firing Well
Two obligations run at once: to the person leaving and to everyone staying. Most of what goes wrong happens in the months before the conversation, not…
Read →The Productive Employee Who Violates the Standard
The exemption is never announced and is understood by everyone. What the organization learns is not that this person is valuable, but that the standard has…
Read →Correcting Without Humiliating
A correction that lands on the person rather than the act produces defence instead of change. The distinction is audible in the first sentence and decides…
Read →The First Violation
The response to the first breach is the moment a standard becomes real or becomes a suggestion. Everything after it is negotiation against a line the…
Read →Setting a Standard and Holding It
Your standard is the worst behaviour you have permitted, not the best you have praised. Everything above that line is aspiration, and the organization worked out…
Read →Conflicts of Interest You Do Not Notice
Disclosure frameworks catch money and miss almost everything else. In a small state the bidder is your neighbour, no financial interest exists, and your judgment is…
Read →Humility and Self-Doubt Are Not the Same Thing
Humility includes knowing what you are good at. A leader who will not assert competence they actually hold is not being modest; they are buying their…
Read →Owning a Mistake in Public
The partial admission does more damage than silence, because it establishes that you know and are managing. The gap between what you conceded and what everyone…
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