work. progress. life.

Working with governing boards is a great reminder of how central people are to organizations, and how important it is, in the words of Jim Collins, to “get the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats.” As it is across any organization, the  Read more »

One of the things I love most about working with the governing boards of educational organizations is helping those who enable the education of others to understand that they, too, learn and must increase their capacity to do so. As with the institutions they govern,  learning within boards takes place on an individual and organizational  Read more »

At the eleventh hour, I was offered a job. With bags packed, two days before departing my job at the college and three days before the flight to my parent’s home, I was invited to join the staff of a small, growing nonprofit organization. Pangs of guilt and failure eased. No return to the den,  Read more »

One relocation, one new job, and not a few headaches and sleepless nights later, I have resumed writing. Nothing like these first tentative taps on the keyboard after a blogging and social media hiatus. Have I been missed? What about my tweeps? Will I lose followers now that I am no longer in higher education–gone  Read more »

If you’d asked me a few years ago what the critical factors for successful work were, I would have spoken about the importance of passion, a clear mission, process, policies, the “right” people, and structure. Since then, further work with teams and organizations has taught me the power of interpersonal relationships. Now, after reading Diana  Read more »