MOR Insight

The issue of employee engagement has surfaced in several ways over the past few weeks – what is it?, why is it important?, should I be concerned about my team’s engagement?, how would I improve it?, what could/should a team member do to increase his/her engagement?, etc.  This issue and these questions have led to this and the next two Tuesday Readings.

We began the 2015 Tuesday Readings with a series of readings focused on being intentional.  A week later, we focused on being intentional about developing new practices to strengthen our leadership.  We next focused on the art of saying “NO,” about being intentional in adding to your deliverables.

We began the Tuesday Readings for 2015 with a focus on being intentional, and followed that with an essay on practices and then, last week, on the art of saying “no.”  Today we want to take a next step and turn to your calendar and being intentional about it.  It’s been noted that you have a choice – either you control your calendar or your calendar controls you.  I fear that too often it’s the later when really it should be the former.  You really need to control your calendar to be an effective leader and be intentional about how you use your time.

Almost everyone I run into bemoans their busyness, the large number of To Do’s that are in front of them, and the seeming inability to make headway in reducing the length of the list.  Author and consultant David Allen suggests that the typical mid-level manager, at any one time, spanning all aspects of his or her life, has 40 – 70 projects (a project being anything that takes more than one step to finish) and 150 – 200 next action steps.  (As an aside, you really do have to have a system – beyond your brain – to manage all this or else items will always get lost.)


Today’s Tuesday Reading is an essay by Jim Dezieck, Leadership Coach at MOR Associates.  In the essay, Jim focuses on developing new practices.  As I indicated in last week’s Tuesday Reading, building new practices is one step in becoming more intentional.

Happy New Year!

At the beginning of each new year, many individuals, particularly Americans, develop New Year’s Resolutions for themselves.  Doing this is neither new nor all that unique.  Babylonians made resolutions 2500 years ago, and since then, everyone has followed.

Today’s Tuesday Reading, “How to Spend the First 10 Minutes of Your Day” <http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/06/how-to-spend-the-first-10-minutes-of-your-day/>, appeared in the HBR blog and is from the pen of Ron Friedman, founder of ignite80, a consulting firm that helps leaders build thriving organizations.  

Today’s Tuesday Reading is a reflection written for his cohort by Patrick Widham, IT Support Manager at Montana State University and recent IT Leaders Program alum.

When we started the first session, I mentioned that I was like a sponge and wanted to soak in all of the information I could.  Looking back on that statement I realized that I was not 100% honest with myself.

I did not fully grasp what the MOR program was all about and didn’t anticipate that amount of commitment that was needed.  I am happy to say that it wasn’t long before I came around! 

Today’s Tuesday Reading, “Why We Humblebrag About Being Busy," comes from the pen of Greg McKeown and recently appeared in the HBR blogs.  McKeown is author of Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less and is a business writer, consultant, and researcher specializing in leadership, strategy design, collective intelligence and human systems.

This week, at least in the United States, we celebrate Thanksgiving Day, traditionally a day of giving thanks for the harvest (that provides our food) and for the preceding year. History suggests that this celebration goes back in the United States at least to a 1621 feast in the Plymouth Colony celebrating a good harvest in the Colony’s first year.  This tradition, with both civil and religious roots, has continued and since 1941 has been celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November.