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the monday message
Why “Why” Matters
What do you do when you’ve been working for a while and you’re getting tired, frazzled and punchy? It could be on a single project or over a long season. Regardless, you have to somehow push through it all in order to provide a quality result for your clients. Over...
“Not My Problem” Already Is
It's amazing how many professionals assume their “soft skills” are sufficient. They usually assess their current level soft skill ability to be adequate for what they do. That’s a problem—their problem. Before I get too far, just so you know, there is no such thing as...
Communication Is NEVER The Problem
I just concluded a series of leadership courses from the Partner-Pipeline for a multi-office firm. In the senior manager course, they learned how to lead a change initiative, whether it be in their firm or with clients. One of the key points of change management is...
They Should Just Know
I had several interesting calls this week. One was with a senior manager who is in an unfortunate situation where his career pursuits are not being supported by the leaders in his firm. As we talked, it became evident that he expected the firm to pave the way for him...
Get Off The Field!
In this season of football, there is so much excitement. Crisp, fall days, the bands are playing, tens of thousands of people cheering, lines everywhere. There is so much going on that it’s any wonder that the coaches and players can remain focused on what’s...
Your Perfectionism Is Distracting
I heard a story from a CPA who had an individual tax client that happened to be a perfectionist. Somehow, a $33 entry was carried over from a previous tax return. Whether it was there or not made no difference in the return, neither financially to the client or with...
Excellence Isn’t Perfectionism
Professionals have a natural proclivity to well. You desire to show yourself worthy of professional stature by the quality of work you produce. You enjoy applying your knowledge and skill to create something you can be proud of and others will appreciate. All of that...
Feedback For Your Purposes
From last week’s message on receiving feedback, a number of highly respected partners posed some interesting questions and dilemmas they have faced, like how to handle feedback that’s not objective, anonymous comments or feedback they just don’t agree with. These are...
A Leader or THE Leader?
Intentional leaders learn the knowledge and skills of leader effectiveness. They focus is on what they bring to a situation and practice being effective. They hone their skills to be the best they can be. The problem is that what you bring to the leader role may not...
Avoid Becoming Cruft
In one of Seth Godin’s messages last week, he used a word I’d never heard before. The word was “cruft” and it sounded odd. So I looked it up. Apparently, cruft was originated in the 1950’s to describe computer code that was designed poorly or complicated beyond...
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