March 3, 2025
Good morning! It’s the first Monday of March… time to get to work. The Dairy Queen is open! Fifty-five years in a row of not missing opening day.Lion or a Lamb? If you go by temperature, it might have been a lion; if by sunshine and zero precipitation, it might have been a lamb. Twenty-nine more days of it and it likely won’t stay the same for all of that time.
- Did your favourite movie win? How about your favourite actor (when did that become gender neutral?)
- How about your favourite sound or costumes or editing?
- From a dime, to a quarter, to fifty cents (YT), to a dollar — and now to five dollars!
- More than 120% cumulative inflation the last 20 years.
- According to Delta Dental, the national average payout from the Tooth Fairy for a lost tooth is now >$5.
- Do you do anything special for the Feast of Patrick? It’s two weeks from now, on a Monday this year.
- Wanna skype someone? Do it within the next sixty days… after that, it won’t exist.
- More and more experts are suggesting an organization focus on WHY it exists before it tries to do other things. (MIT Sloan, 2025)
- Values are the foundation, purpose (WHY) is the inspiration and focus.
- Effective leadership has mattered to humans for as far back as we can see.
- It matters now more than ever, perhaps because there are more of us and because there are greater consequences.
- Whether you operate a sole proprietorship, a small business, or a larger corporation, YOUR leadership matters.
- From this consulting platform it is fascinating to observe how often leaders get distracted — and, as a result, are less effective.
- Tens of thousands of books have been written on the topic and gurus d’jour change with the wind, but it seems as if there are a few unchanging core principles.
- If you can invest only a little bit of time each day on these core principles, keep them in front of you — and get yourself back on track.
- Create purpose and clarity;
- Create and sustain focus;
- Create and sustain capacity;
- Create drive (motivation/ inspiration);
- Reduce complexity (remember K.I.S.M.I.F. — or, some learned it as more of a pejorative: K.I.S.S.);
- Get out of the way of your fastest horses!
- Reduce friction (and, we would add, stress). (Informed by Boston Consulting Group, Lesser, Etc., et al., 2025)
- And, as long as we’re doing lists, here is a quick look at team dysfunction as suggested by Lencioni:
- Absence of trust;
- Fear of conflict;
- Lack of commitment;
- Inadequate accountability;
- Individuals compete vs. collaborate
- Caregivers for adults experience almost twice the work place burnout than those who care for children.
- Thirty-seven percent of caregivers for adults report high burnout symptoms compared to 20% of those who care for children, men more than women in all categories. (Thaker, 2025)
- In addition, demographers have been telling us for decades that soon there will be too few caregivers and too many needing care.
- Any help in sight? Probably not; do the math.
- Do not lose hope when you feed the birds and the squirrels get most of it.
- “Certainty is the great enemy of unity… the deadly enemy of tolerance.” (Fiennes in Conclave, 2024)
