So maybe you think you're all that and a bag of chips and that you can get more things done than most people in your organization.  As managers, though, it's not just about you getting things done on your own; it's about you getting your team to be as effective (or more) as you.

I deliberately use the term effective versus efficient.  For me, there is a very clear distinction which I believe is crucial in driving results.

In an earlier leadership role I had been striving to create focus and accountability within each of our major work areas.  The team responded beautifully with doing their best to adjust to roles, to stay focused on their areas, and to minimize confusion by stepping across boundaries.  They did exactly as I asked.

We were in a team meeting and I could see that there was erupting confusion around contacting customers in an effort to close some sales.  There was a lot of respect for my sales & marketing manager in not stepping in on her turf when it came to customers. Where the problem arose, though, was in the fact that the team was confused as to who was supposed to be following up on some key sales activity that had begun prior to our organizational re-alignment.

So let’s talk about over-used terms for a minute. 

If you’ve been in the business world for any length of time you’ve likely heard your management espouse the desire for employees to achieve greater work/life balance.  Many U.S. companies have adopted programs to help employees strike a better life balance by providing health club benefits, entertainment discount programs, and additional time off for events such as the birth of a child.  Despite all this, Americans are of the most overworked and flat-out busy people on earth, recently surpassing the Japanese and long surpassing the Europeans. With all this discussion of work/life balance, how can we in the U.S. also be of the most overworked people in the world?  The answer is pretty simple; many of us talk work/life balance, but don’t live work/life balance primarily because we don’t know how to do it. 

Colleagues - I just created a daily calendar for dads using our Six-Word Lessons format.  Each month I focus on a specific topic, such as "Planning for the Future", "Balancing it All",  "Managing Your Career", etc.  Every day I send out a Six-Word Lesson for that topic (see samples above).  To avoid flooding inboxes with daily emails, I am doing only through social media.  If you would like to get these lessons in your social media feed click on one of the below social media buttons and follow me.  I also appreciate you sharing the lessons in your social media feed :-).

As always would love your feedback.  Please feel free to share your thoughts with me. 

Bud was one of the most brilliant people in his organization.  Only in his mid-thirties, Bud amazed his senior managers with his ability to grasp problems and develop innovative and effective solutions to those problems.  He was highly sought after as a "go-to" guy and would consistently come up with creative approaches.  His management decided to give him a thorny project with a team of over 100 professionals.  "This is my chance to really prove I can deliver", Bud thought as he willingly accepted the project.

Bud wasted no time in coming up with some great solutions which his management thought were brilliant.  Expectations were sky-high and Bud was on a project high.  Then the problems started.

My wife Patty and I some time back completed a massive renovation on a townhome in the Seattle area.   The townhome was built in the late 70's and was decorated using all of the finest materials that the Disco era had to offer.  The original owners liked it so much that they changed precisely nothing for the 30 years they lived there right down to the 8-track player on the guest room night stand.  We purchased the townhome in late 2009 with the intention of renovating the townhome and occupying it after our son graduated high school.

Some time back I was having breakfast with a couple of guys that I work with in one of the organizations which I volunteer.  In this organization, I have been leading a group of about nine men for about four months to set a vision for the group, decide upon our key focus areas, and lay out activities which the group will undertake for the next year.  I was very pleased with how the team "gelled" and the fact that we seemed to be moving the ball forward towards meeting our vision.  During breakfast, one of the guys told me that, by and large, the team was happy with me but a couple felt that I came in too heavy-handed and authoritarian.  Blech.

During winter my hands tend to dry out and get chapped.  One night when my hands felt like sandpaper I asked my wife if she had any hand lotion.  "Sure, what kind do you want?" she asked.  "The hand lotion kind," I said like the knuckle-dragger I am.  She then handed me an ice bucket which contained the following:

As leaders we have a responsibility to ensure that our area is managed effectively and that we are driving the organization to achieve its stated objectives. We also have a responsibility to grow the next generation of leaders to ensure that the great work we've done continues on after we've moved on.　 Keep some of these nuggets in mind as you ponder making the next generation of leaders great:　

A number of years back I was in a meeting with two HR representatives at my company.They were explaining to me how the HR organization wanted to be more “strategic” with its clients and how they wanted to help us with annual resource planning.   At the time, our biggest problem was filling open positions with qualified candidates; a number of key positions had been open for months with no qualified candidates in the hiring pipeline. When I asked the HR reps about how they were going to help with this problem, they both told me that they didn’t have time to address the hiring issues because they were tasked with being more “strategic”.  Needless to say, the meeting went downhill in a hurry because the HR reps were more interested in fulfilling the HR organization’s “be strategic” mandate than they were in helping me with my real-life problem.