I spent a weekend on a Boy Scout campout last month. (Yes, it was January in Chicago, and we were outside in tents from Friday night until Sunday morning. The temperature ranged from 13° F to 34° F – so it was cold but not life-threatening.) One of the things I love about the Boy…
In human affairs, the distance between the leaders and the average is a constant. If leadership performance is high, the average will go up. The effective executive knows that it is easier to raise one leader’s performance than to raise the performance of a whole mass. ~ Peter Drucker in The Effective Executive Leaders I…
The effective executive knows that to get strength, one has to put up with weaknesses. ~ Peter Drucker in The Effective Executive Kicking off an assignment with a new client, I casually ask, “Tell me about your team…” What comes back is a string of complaints. “They rarely come to a meeting prepared; I don’t…
We have two products, one we sell to our customers (HubSpot’s CRM) and one we sell to our employees (HubSpot’s culture). Like your product, you need your culture to be unique relative to the competition (for talent) and you want your culture to be very valuable. Like your product, when it is unique and valuable,…
One of the things that I told my children when I was teaching them to drive is it better to make small adjustments to the steering wheel than big ones, particularly when you’re driving fast! Big adjustments to the steering wheel can make the car feel and act unstable. The same is true in your…
Very few things give you the same improvement in physical and mental health as a good dose of nature! If you follow the thread and look at the studies, you’ll find Two hours per week outside in nature significantly improve physical and mental health. As little as 10 – 20 minutes of sitting or walking…
Part of what makes it hard to give things time and to be patient when results are slow is that we keep raising the stakes on ourselves. We start something new; maybe we start doing more consistent outreach. In the first week, we see 1 – 2 leads, and the second week the same. Now…
Before you read this I want you to know, I’m not advocating for a position — this is a problem I’m trying to solve. And I’m asking the hive brain (you) to help me. An owner of a 10-person consulting firm is very vocal about their politics on social media – they post pictures of…
Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve been talking about how clarifying your role frees you up to be bored on Friday at 4 PM! The whole point of this exercise is that we want to do our job and only our job so that on Saturday, we don’t need to be doing the billing,…
Once your priorities are clear, getting your calendar to align with those priorities is the next step to getting your work done. One way to start reshaping your calendar is to wipe the slate clean and create a template for an ideal week. By starting with a blank slate, you can schedule your most important…