Innovation Requires Structure

Does this title have you scratching your head? Are you thinking that innovation and structure are opposites?  Read on.  . . Ask most people what they think about when they consider creativity and innovation, and most likely “structure” and “process” won’t be on the list. Would they be on yours? Most of us think about

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Five Keys to Mending Relationships

I grew up on a farm and was hard on jeans as a kid. Just ask my mom, a talented seamstress who spent more hours than you can imagine mending torn jeans. Today, jeans come with holes – and you pay extra for them. In my youth, you earned those holes, and didn’t ever want

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It’s My Anniversary – and You Get to Celebrate!

On September 30, 1993, I turned in my badge and office key at Chevron in downtown San Francisco, and the next day I started my business – the business now known as The Kevin Eikenberry Group. That means, in a bit more than a month, I will celebrate 20 years in business. What started at

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There’s No Time Like the Present

Often, the best quotations are the briefest. If you read these Friday posts frequently, you will see that I usually select ideas that are stated briefly. Today is another example. Read it twice, then get to work. Questions to Ponder – How often has waiting served me best? – How many times do I wish

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Busting the Barriers to Greater Innovation

Last week, I did my best Jack Nicholson/ Colonel Jessup imitation to get you thinking about why you don’t have as much innovation in your team or organization as you wish.  (You can read it here  – but the short answer is the challenge starts with you.) At the end of that article, I promised

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Little Hinges Swing Big Doors

Little hinges swing big doors. I first heard those words from a mentor of mine, and later realized they originally came from the entrepreneur and author, W. Clement Stone. This week I found a whole new meaning in these words. While the first pains came on a Thursday, last Monday I had severe pain which

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Opening Doors to Teamwork and Collaboration

by Judith H. Katz and Frederick A. Miller The subtitle of this book which published in May of this year is “4 Keys that change everything”.  It is a big promise, and while there may be a bit of accepted hyperbole there, generally speaking the four big ideas in this book will have, when implemented,

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Climbing Your Mountain

One of my favorite movies is The Sound of Music, and one of the best songs in the movie (in my opinion) is “Climb Every Mountain”.  Today’s quotation isn’t from or about the movie, but the first time I read it, I started humming the song in my head (if you don’t know the song,

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Innovation According to Jack Nicholson

Ask my team and they will tell you I am full of (too many?) new ideas, and ask me and I will tell you that we don’t always innovate as much as I would like. Thinking about this paradox on a flight yesterday led me to look squarely at me. After all, if we aren’t

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Trust at a Distance – And How to Build It

Trust is all over the news these days. People don’t trust the judgment of a jury in Florida. The Yankees don’t trust one of their star players. The Congress doesn’t trust the President, and vice versa. And now the media is asking people if they trust candidate for Mayor of New York (and former Congressman)

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