In a world built on relationships, meetings matter. They are important and really help bring people together to achieve common goals. Since meetings are important, it's critical that you know how to run one, properly. First and foremost. Make sure you know what the meeting is for: • Discussion / Exploration • Decision • Information sharing Next, make sure that you actually have the right people at the meeting based on your intention, and more importantly, make sure THEY know why they have been asked to participate. Third and most important, respect people's TIME. Everyone is busy, has a lot on the go and attending meetings takes away time from other things they could / should be working on. To respect people's time, manage your meeting. Start on time, end on time and make sure that you drive the meeting in such a way that you will cover what needs to be covered during the stated time. Don't allow the meeting to go off the rails and then simply think that you can book an...

There is so much talk with respect to COVID and how it has 'changed everything forever'. That's hard to accept. From a professional side, I get it. New restrictions, new concerns and trying to figure out how you can effectively put in place, manage and communicate that it is 'safe' to return to normal. Within a business, changing the culture or the structure of your organization is extremely hard. Businesses have grown and evolved their culture to where it is today. There is a huge amount of shared beliefs, norms and expectations that allow you to operate how you do. You can't just flip the switch and have a totally different picture tomorrow. From a personal side however, I am still waiting to see it. Having been the one who has been going to stores and doing the shopping all throughout this pandemic, I can see that people are done. In the beginning, a lot of people, if not everyone was adhering to whatever guidelines where given. We waited patiently in lines, ...

Coming from an operations world, you are always on the go. While you might work 8 or 10 hours a day, the other parts of your business and/or your responsibility are usually going 24 hours a day. This is one of the most challenging things for people to manage as they get into an operations world. At first you simply believe that you will do more hours, get ahead of the curve and then you will be able to slow down and relax. Unfortunately it doesn't work that way. The more you get accomplished, the more 'opportunities' you seem to have. Added to this, you start to deal with the matrix above more often then you realize. The biggest trap that people fall into with their work and responsibilities is not taking the time to understand where each task / problem / responsibility fits. The other major challenge is that we often take on what 'seems' to be urgent and important ... for other people and not necessarily ourselves. With so many people working from home right now, I...