Positive Deviance: Don’t Just Obsess On What’s Not Working, Reproduce What Is

We all want ingenious performance to lead us to better results. In order for teams to get those better results, they must help each other evaluate and alter performance. In the pursuit of better results, it's easy to spend an awful lot of time talking about, and obsessing over, what's going wrong. The rationale goes [...]

Positive Deviance: Don’t Just Obsess On What’s Not Working, Reproduce What Is2016-10-03T05:15:40-04:00

Don’t Develop Leaders in a Vacuum

In their book, Leaders Ready Now, Matthew Paese, Audrew Smith and William Byham point out that accelerating leadership in your organization requires that people take bold risks that have uncertain outcomes. I make a similar case about ingenuity in my book, Tribal Alchemy: Turning What You Have Into What You Need.   Maybe the two [...]

Don’t Develop Leaders in a Vacuum2016-09-08T10:27:59-04:00

Choose A Better “You”

In his book, Smarter, Faster, Better: The Secrets of Being Productive In Life and Business, Charles Duhigg tells a story about Eric Quintanilla.   Quintanilla joined the Marines when he was 23 years old. He found in the Corps a philosophy of life that taught him how to proactively collaborate with others under enormous pressure. [...]

Choose A Better “You”2016-07-27T06:20:51-04:00

Use Judo on Your Moods

Scenario One: Your day is going along just fine. Then you get a piece of news from a colleague that makes you mad.   Scenario Two: A simple two minute “hello” phone call to your significant other turns into a 15-minute argument about, nothing.   Scenario Three: A meeting you attend is full of energy [...]

Use Judo on Your Moods2016-07-18T05:57:35-04:00

What (and how) you see affects what you can create

Adapted from the book, Tribal Alchemy: Turning What You Have Into What You Need. (2016). Dave Fleming. A Tribal Alchemy Resource.     At the beginning of the Apollo 13 “build-a-filter” scene, the Tiger Team enters the room to receive instructions. (NOTE: You can read about the true story of the filter, here). An engineer [...]

What (and how) you see affects what you can create2016-06-15T05:44:47-04:00

Busyness: Enemy of Creativity and Ingenuity

Adapted from the book, Tribal Alchemy: Turning What You Have Into What You Need. (2016). Dave Fleming. A Tribal Alchemy Resource. --- In the first three sections of the book, I explore a process that ingenious tribes use to turn what they have into what they need--in order to overcome challenges and seize opportunities. In [...]

Busyness: Enemy of Creativity and Ingenuity2016-06-02T05:24:00-04:00