Above all else

My daughter shares with me an intrinsic propensity to be easily inspired.  We both look at the world and the circumstances around us with a "teach me!" lens, and get really excited about life lessons and how we can grow. Take myself, for example.  Whenever I attend a business conference or meeting, I almost always come away with 2-3 things that I will actually do about what I've heard.  Occasionally, it's a technical learning point, but much more often, it's some tangential application on team dynamics, as to how we organise ourselves, or interact with each other, or how we can be better equipped.  My colleagues have learned to be wary about me attending conferences, because it means another new idea is coming their way :D In fact, if I think about it, that's what causes this blog to be written.  I get easily inspired by what happens around me, and it helps me to write it down.  Today's blog is particularly symptomatic of this - because it's abou...

Peter Drucker was one of most eminent business thinkers of the 20th Century.  He once wrote, "You can't manage what you can't measure".  I think this is particularly true for things that don't naturally come to us - for example, when we're trying to introduce some new or otherwise challenging process or habit.  So if we're bringing in some new product to the market, we need to (a) establish what we think success is supposed to look like, and then (b) measure how well we're doing against that pre-established picture of success. Only then can we figure out whether and what we did well, and what we need to do better, and apply those lessons not only to that new product, but to future product launches. So far, so obvious.  I find that this applies to personal habits as well.  For example, I know lots of friends who aim for the 10,000 steps a day target.  Success looks like: (a) getting fit and healthy, and measurement looks like (b) 10,000 steps a ...