By Michael Holland - Creating rituals and habits in your life enable you to be much more efficient and effective. Many studies and books – The Power of Habit is a great one – delve into the inner workings of our brain and the role it plays in creating habits. The short story: Our brains [...]
by Michael Holland - Steve Jobs was a grand quitter. While he was immensely successful building and running Apple, he strategically leveraged quitting. He quit acclaimed Reed College after one semester and then dropped in periodically on creative classes at the school. He later recounted how one course in calligraphy developed his love of typography. [...]
By Michael Holland - While on your way to a meeting, you get word that the meeting is being rescheduled. You now have 45 minutes of found time. Found time is like winning a small lottery. You smile like when you walk outside on the first really nice day of spring. Great leaders are prepared [...]
By Michael Holland - A seasoned Senior Vice President appears to have it all together. He glides through the office with ease, almost strutting with an aura of success and accomplishment. He drives projects to conclusion, he musters employees and whole departments to give more and more work effort. He leaves late in the evening, [...]
By Michael Holland - There’s the young leader slowly walking in the door to work at 7:50 am. His face reveals the agony he feels on this Friday morning as he’s worked so many hours this week just trying to get ahead of the workflow for his team and himself. He’s in for a 10 [...]
By Michael Holland - Having worked with hundreds and hundreds of leaders, I find so many lack focus on working to become effective at leading well. The key is micro-behaviors. Those little things that we do that have longer term ripple impacts. The gap for most leaders comes from not intentionally creating habits that enable healthy micro-behaviors [...]
By Michael Holland - When a leader holds onto a project or work that could be delegated, is he being selfless or selfish? Is he supporting and protecting his employees or is he limiting their growth potential? Is he making sure things are done right or is he limiting the opportunities for innovation in work product [...]
By Michael Holland - Every day, there they are, these 3-minute slices of time. Some days there might be four of them, the next there could be seven. These tiny slices of time come about when walking down a hallway, waiting for a video meeting to start, during a break in a long meeting, while [...]
By Michael Holland - A few years ago, I got caught up in trying to get in better shape to lose weight. I focused my energy on the goal of losing weight which, unfortunately, was the wrong problem to solve. To be successful, I needed to look at habits that could enable me to live [...]
By Michael Holland - Recently as I was scheduling the next coaching session with a leader, I was able to see her Outlook calendar. She made a comment about constantly being double-booked for time slots for meetings and at times triple-booked. And that she routinely was in back-to-back meetings throughout a day sometimes numbering as [...]
