8/13/10: Wally's Writing Last Week

Here's some of my writing on the web last week.

My Three Star Leadership Blog

8/8/10: Leadership Reading to Start Your Week
Here are five choice articles from the business schools, the business press and major consulting firms to start off your work week. I'm pointing you to articles about succeeding in a commodity industry, a looming tech problem, picking the right technology, measuring human capital, and happiness.

Idea Deficit Disorder – Treating Yourself
Idea Deficit Disorder (IDD) is a serious condition that afflicts millions. If you suffer from IDD, here's how you can treat yourself, without resorting to expensive seminars or magical cures advertised on late night TV.

Tom Stemberg, Staples, and the Two Strategy Questions
You may have heard the "fairy tale version" of how Staples got started. The real story is much more interesting.

The HP Way
That whirring sound you hear is Dave Packard and Bill Hewlett spinning in their graves. Whatever happened to the HP Way?

8/11/10: A Midweek Look at the Independent Business Blogs
Every week I select five excellent posts from this week's independent business blogs. This week, I'm pointing you to posts on truths about leadership, paying attention to what works, creating a great working environment, storytelling as a management technique, and trust. As a bonus, there's a pointer to a post on questionable assumptions about work.

Idea Deficit Disorder – Stopping the Epidemic
Idea Deficit Disorder (IDD) doesn't just affect individuals. Whole teams and companies can fall victim to this devastating condition that robs us all of the ideas that are the source of progress.

Business Ethics Pointers and Comment
Business ethics are always important. But they come and go in public discussion. Here some resources you can use to aid your thinking, discussion, and action, whether everyone is talking about ethics or not.

My Posts at Results vs. Activities

Human Capital: Are You an Investor or a Trader?
Chuck Christensen was one of the wisest human beings I ever knew. He'd learned a lot in his "rags to riches" career and he shared it freely.

8/12/10: Top Talent Development Posts this Week
Every week, I review blogs that cover talent development to find you the pick of the lot. In this post, you'll find pointers to pieces about culture, rewards, the costs of hiring Homer Simpson, helping technical experts transition to management, and measuring human capital.

My Post on The Management Experts

Self-Development: What does a good mentoring relationship require?
Ah, mentoring!!! Named for a classical character, offered as the career boost for anyone. Reality is a bit more mixed.

My free, email only Three Star Leadership Letter was on "The Brian May Rules."

You'll also find me at Weekly Leader with a quick review of the business blogs and the Question of the Week.

Client Projects

This week I'm writing promotional material for a book on business strategy, writing articles to enrich and promote one client's web site, and writing blog posts for a client.

My latest book, Ruthless Focus is now available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. I've also posted about the contents.

My coaching calendar currently has space open. If you want to get a book done, let's talk about options. What can I do for you?

8/7/10: Wally's Writing Last Week

Here's some of my writing on the web last week.

My Three Star Leadership Blog

8/1/10: Leadership Reading to Start Your Week
Here are five choice articles from the business schools, the business press and major consulting firms to start off your work week. I'm pointing you to articles about the new abnormal, what to call "lean" manufacturing, Sizzler on the comeback trail, management practices, and Italy.

It's not about ROWE
The best thing that debates about ROWE have done is raise issues for discussion. The worst thing is that the debates are more about ROWE than the real issues.

Ruthless Focus: What about Toyota?
In the book, Ruthless Focus, we used Toyota as an example of a company that had decades of success because of a ruthless focus on a simple core strategy. Since then the company has fallen on hard times.

8/4/10: Midweek Look at the Independent Business Blog
Every week I select five excellent posts from this week's independent business blogs. This week, I'm pointing you to posts on becoming a leader, results orientation (or not), making the most of your people time, sustainable business excellence, and creating a culture of fear.

Ruthless Focus: Three Kinds of Crisis
Crises are part of business. Some are part of a natural cycle. Some sneak up on you. And some are self-inflicted.

The story of Yahoo's shifting strategy
Yahoo didn't start out to be a business. When it became a business it never seemed to have a clear strategy. That's a recipe for confusion, not success.

My Posts at Results vs. Activities

Quick, develop some leaders!
"'Honey, it's almost dinner time. Would you go outside and plant some tomatoes?' Sounds stupid. After all, you can't plant tomatoes at 4 o'clock and have tomatoes at 6 o'clock dinner. But that seems to be what many companies expect from talent development."

8/5/10: Top Talent Development Posts this Week
Every week, I review blogs that cover talent development to find you the pick of the lot for the week. In this post, you'll find pointers to pieces about retaining top talent, talent management strategies, today's top talent management challenges, training for new managers, and hiring senior executives that stay and produce.

My Posts on The Management Experts

Performance Management: The Secret
We never find out what Curly's secret of life is. But it's OK. I've got more modest ambitions. I know the secret of being a great boss. It's one thing.

My free, email only Three Star Leadership Letter was on "Mater Man."

You'll also find me at Weekly Leader with a quick review of the business blogs and the Question of the Week.

Client Projects

This week I'm writing promotional material for a book on business strategy, coaching an executive on personal efficiency, writing articles to enrich and promote one client's web site, and writing blog posts for a client.

My latest book, co-authored with Tom Hall is Ruthless Focus: How to use key core strategies to grow your business. You can find out more about it on Three Star Leadership of head over to Amazon and Barnes & Noble to buy a few copies.

My coaching calendar currently has space open. If you want to get a book done, let's talk about options. What can I do for you?

7/31/10: Wally's Writing Last Week

Here's some of my writing on the web last week.

My Three Star Leadership Blog

7/25/10: Leadership Reading to Start Your Week
Here are five choice articles from the business schools, the business press and major consulting firms to start off your work week. I'm pointing you to articles about Elon Musk, Avery Dennison, Loblaw, Mercadona and LG Electronics.

10 Engagement-Building Behaviors for the Boss
If you're the boss, we know that you're the one most responsible for the performance, morale, and engagement of your team. Here are ten things you can do to improve all three.

Ruthless Focus: How to use key core strategies to grow your business
Ruthless Focus: How to use key core strategies to grow your business, by Tom Hall and Wally Bock, helps you learn about how to craft and implement a strategy that builds long term competitive advantage and profitability.

7/28/10: A Midweek Look at the Independent Business Blogs
Every week I select five excellent posts from this week's independent business blogs. This week, I'm pointing you to posts on curiosity, starting fast with a new team, a vision of the future, gender-related management issues, and engagement evidence.

Theo Albrecht, Trader Joe's, and Ruthless Focus
Theo Albrecht, co-founder of ALDI, died on Saturday. He was one of the richest men in the world. With ALDI and Trader Joe's, he stayed with strategies that worked.

Book Review: Make Work Great
Make Work Great: Super Charge Your Team, Reinvent the Culture, and Gain Influence One Person at a Time by Ed Muzio will help you change your own working environment. The only catch is that it will be up to you.

My Posts at Results vs. Activities

Plus-Minus at Work
In hockey there's a statistic called "plus-minus." It calculates the goal difference for a player's team when that player is on the ice. It's a way to measure a player's contribution to the team. We need something like that at work.

7/29/10: Top Talent Development Posts this Week
Every week, I review blogs that cover talent development to find you the pick of the lot for the week. In this post, you'll find pointers to pieces about talent management semantics, teamwork or talent, senior leadership and talent development, another survey on innovation and job satisfaction, and gender-specific management training.

My Posts on The Management Experts

The Short Version
In 1941, Prime Minister Winston Churchill wrote the following to his First Lord of the Admiralty: "Pray state this day, on one side of a sheet of paper, how the Royal Navy is being adapted to meet the conditions of modern warfare." Some call it the "Executive Summary." Less formal people might call it "the Reader's Digest version."

My free, email only Three Star Leadership Letter was titled "Away from the Ball."

You'll also find me at Weekly Leader with a quick review of the business blogs and the Question of the Week.

Client Projects

This week I'm writing promotional material for a book on business strategy, coaching an executive in personal efficiency skills, writing articles to enrich and promote one client's web site, and writing blog posts for two clients.

My latest book, Ruthless Focus is now available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. I've written several blog posts to support the book.

On Friday, July 30, 2010, Jim Blasingame interviewed me about the book on his Small Business Advocate show.

My coaching calendar currently has space open. If you want to get a book done, let's talk about options. What can I do for you?

7/24/10: Wally's Writing Last Week

Here's some of my writing on the web last week.

My Three Star Leadership Blog

7/18/10: Leadership Reading to Start Your Week
Here are five choice articles from the business schools, the business press and major consulting firms to start off your work week. I'm pointing you to articles about adjusting strategies, social networking and collaboration, Apple's "mea copout," mining your attic for innovation, and Barnes & Noble.

Keep it Simple, Strategist: Why simplicity is the soul of strategic success
When it comes to strategy, sometimes we confuse complexity with sophistication. But the real test of a strategy isn't sophistication. Instead, it's usability and effectiveness and those grow from simplicity.

Management Improvement Carnival #104
John Hunter has trusted me to host the latest edition of his excellent carnival. So here it is: Management Improvement Carnival #104 with pointers to some other carnivals and pointers to posts on making sure that lessons are learned, the toxic side of leadership, expressing confidence, coaching, and the most dangerous part of a manager's body.

Strategy: Staying with what works
In Ruthless Focus, we point out that there are lots of advantages to staying with a strategy that works instead of chasing after the latest new thing or succumbing to a new CEO or analyst pressure.

7/21/10: A Midweek Look at the Independent Business Blogs
Every week I select five excellent posts from this week's independent business blogs. This week, I'm pointing you to posts on metaphors for your organization, the look of leadership, a vote against Maslow, measuring engagement, and "evidence-based" leadership.

Ruthless Focus on Business Basics
It's not enough to maintain a ruthless focus on your core strategy. That won't take you far if you forget about the business basics.

Flexwork: Pointers and Comment
Flexwork is getting a lot of discussion these days. Here are pointers to some resources to help you understand the issues and make wise choices.

My Posts at Results vs. Activities

The Mary Gloster and Learning
I know this may reflect poorly on my sophistication, but I love the poems of Rudyard Kipling. One of my favorites is "The Mary Gloster." It's very long, but great for reading aloud. My daughters will remember it from when I read them poems before bedtime.

7/22/10: Top Talent Development Posts this Week
Every week, I review blogs that cover talent development to find you the pick of the lot for the week. In this post, you'll find pointers to pieces about barriers to building talent, program evaluation, hiring better, and appreciating your top performers. Plus, there's a list of great articles on motivating top talent.

My Posts on Management Experts

Delegation: It's not for everyone
Delegation is one of the ways you can assign work to your team members. You delegate when you describe a project or task to one of your team members, give them the objective, and make sure that they have the resources they need.

My free, email only Three Star Leadership Letter was on "Learning from the Dogs."

You'll also find me at Weekly Leader with a quick review of the business blogs and the Question of the Week.

Client Projects

This week I'm writing promotional material for a book on business strategy and writing blog posts for two clients.

My latest book, Ruthless Focus is now available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. I wrote several posts about the book this week.

If you need some professional business writing, contact me and we'll discuss options and whether there's a fit.

My coaching calendar currently has space open. If you want to get a book done, contact me and let's talk about options.

I'd love to give a speech or conduct a workshop for your group. Contact me and we'll work out the details.

7/17/10: Wally's Writing Last Week

Here's some of my writing on the web last week.

My Three Star Leadership Blog

7/11/10: Leadership Reading to Start Your Week
Here are five choice articles from the business schools, the business press and major consulting firms to start off your work week. I'm pointing you to articles about learning from the Cleveland Cavaliers, flexwork, executive compensation, IBM, and Honest Tea.

Babies, Bath Water, and Performance Evaluations
Most commentary that calls for eliminating the "annual performance review" think it's the same thing as "performance evaluation." One is a dysfunctional corporate process. The other is what good supervisors do every day.

Learning from Master Banks
Babies are truly engaged. They go at life with energy and purpose. Why aren't more adults like that? Is it something we can change?

7/14/10: A Midweek Look at the Independent Business Blogs
Every week I select five excellent posts from this week's independent business blogs. This week, I'm pointing you to posts on strategy, the dark side of leadership, working for an "uninspiring" boss, trying to make others happy (or not), and the future of the corporation.

Ruthless Focus: The Story of the Book
Here's how Ruthless Focus came to be written.

Ruthless Focus: An Annotated Table of Contents
Ruthless Focus: How to use key core strategies to grow your business is about what companies that have been successful for decades do that's different. Here's an annotated table of contents so you can find out what's in store for you inside the book.

My Posts at Results vs. Activities

Why high potential isn't enough
My mother had a saying that "You can't just hire a hand. The whole man always comes with it." The language is a little dated, but the truth is still the same.

7/15/10: Top Talent Development Posts this Week
Every week, I review blogs that cover talent development to find you the pick of the lot for the week. In this post, you'll find pointers to pieces about what you can learn (yes, there is something) from the Cleveland Cavaliers, executive derailment, managing the toxic high performer, distributing scarce rewards, and some thoughts on management practices for the 21st Century.

My Posts on Management Experts

Rewards and Recognition: Praise Fundamentals
Symphony conductor Otto Klemperer was like a lot of the bosses I had coming up. He was a demanding taskmaster who never, ever, praised the musicians who played for him.

My free, email only Three Star Leadership Letter was on "The Transition Zone."

You'll also find me at Weekly Leader with a quick review of the business blogs and the Question of the Week.

Client Projects

This week I'm writing promotional material for a book on business strategy, writing articles to enrich and promote one client's web site, and writing blog posts for two clients.

My next book, Ruthless Focus is now available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. I'll be writing articles and blog posts to support the book.

My coaching calendar currently has space open. If you want to get a book done, let's talk about options. What can I do for you?

7/10/10: Wally's Writing Last Week

Here's some of my writing on the web last week.

My Three Star Leadership Blog

7/5/10: Leadership Reading to Start Your Week
Here are three choice articles from the business schools, the business press and major consulting firms to start off your work week. I'm pointing you to articles about complexity and failure, Amazon, and the line between exaggeration and lying.

7/7/10: Midweek Look at the Independent Business Blogs
Every week I select five excellent posts from this week's independent business blogs. This week, I'm pointing you to posts on civility in the work place, intestinal fortitude, getting your new idea accepted, experimenting at work, and the leadership journey.

Identifying Great Leaders
Are the top supervisors in your organization the ones who get the best evaluations? Sometimes. But to be sure who's really good you need more than one perspective.

Be the boss, but don't be a jerk.
George Cloutier's recent article in Entrepreneur was seriously silly, but it stimulated some good conversation about what a boss's job is.

My Posts at Results vs. Activities

Developing Leaders for a New Century
Forty years ago, the business world was relatively stable. Long range planning was the sophisticated management practice of choice.

7/8/10: Top Talent Development Posts this Week
Every week, I review blogs that cover talent development to find you the pick of the lot for the week. In this post, you'll find pointers to pieces about retaining employees, learning initiatives, trust as a force behind great places to work, senior executive compensation, and reviewing your talent management practices.

My Posts on Management Experts

Performance Management: Motivation Made Simple
If you're a manager then you've been told at least once that you have to "motivate your people." But how do you do that? Here's what you can do to get the job done.

My free, email only Three Star Leadership Letter was on "The B Team Rules"

You'll also find me at Weekly Leader with a quick review of the business blogs and the Question of the Week.

Client Projects

This week I'm writing promotional material for a book on business strategy, coaching an executive on improving personal efficiency, writing articles to enrich and promote a client's web site, and writing blog posts for a client. I'm also helping a client evaluate a book project idea.

My next book, Ruthless Focus is now available on Amazon.

My coaching calendar currently has space open. If you want to get a book done, let's talk about options. What can I do for you?

6/26/10: Wally's Writing Last Week

Here's some of my writing on the web last week.

My Three Star Leadership Blog

6/20/10: Leadership Reading to Start Your Week
Here are five choice articles from the business schools, the business press and major consulting firms to start off your work week. I'm pointing you to articles about top small company workplaces, executive pay and incentives, digital natives, harsh critiques, and whether leadership matters.

A Summer Reading Un-List
Summer time is the time for some extra reading. This year, instead of a list, I'm making a few suggestions.

Book Review: Wellbeing
Wellbeing: The Five Essential Elements is a reasonable and well-presented look at the different elements that make up life, along with some suggestions and tools for improving things.

6/23/10: A Midweek Look at the Independent Business Blogs
Every week I select five excellent posts from this week's independent business blogs. This week, I'm pointing you to posts on making the most of your most important asset, coordination to solve workplace challenges, word selection, measuring performance, and a leader's confidence.

My Posts at Results vs. Activities

What about Dilbert?
Corporate pashas are telling us that "their" people are their most important asset. The war for talent seems to be up there toward the top of concerns in most surveys of senior executives. If all that's true, why is Dilbert so popular? Could it be that, despite the rhetoric, we still think of humans as interchangeable parts? Are we more concerned with disembodied "talent" than with the complex human beings that carry it?

6/24/10: Top Talent Development Posts this Week
Every week, I review blogs that cover talent development to find you the pick of the lot. In this post, you'll find pointers to pieces about the summer of worker discontent, learning on the job, performance measurement, luring top talent, and a very basic question about your company that you need to answer.

My Posts on Management Experts

Leader vs. Manager: What Peter Drucker didn't Say
For years we've been suffering from a kind of "grade inflation" when it comes to the jobs of leadership and management. Somehow we've gotten into the mixed up state where we believe that leadership is better and a higher calling than management. I could blame Peter Drucker.

My free, email only Three Star Leadership Letter was on "The Ed Thorp Rules."

You'll also find me at Weekly Leader with a quick review of the business blogs and the Question of the Week.

Client Projects

This week I'm writing promotional material for a book on business strategy, working with a successful consultant to develop her next information product, writing articles to enrich and promote one client's web site, and writing blog posts for two clients.

My next book, Ruthless Focus is scheduled for release in early June.

My coaching calendar currently has space open. If you want to get a book done, let's talk about options. What can I do for you?