Dilbert on Daily Huddles

"...keeping you great" Ten Minutes with the Growth Guy

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Dilbert on the "daily huddle" -- you know a concept "has arrived" when Scott Cook starts beating it up -- check out Tuesday's strip  and Wednesday's strip.  I did send an email to Scott Adams offering to train Dilbert & Co. on the proper way to lead a daily huddle!!

Warren Buffett on investing, the economy, etc. -- 15 times a year the wealthiest person on earth shares his wisdom with a group of students. Recently, FORTUNE magazine was invited to sit in -- if you read just one article this week take ten minutes to scan through this insightful piece -- this link provides a summary, but I would encourage you to click on the full article. My favorite Buffett line "I think we've got fabulous capital markets in this country, and they get screwed up often enough to make them even more fabulous. I mean, you don't want a capital market that functions perfectly if you're in my business." There you have it -- thank goodness for fools!

Pixar's Brad Bird on innovation -- and if you have any brain minutes left, read this amazing interview McKinsey did with Brad Bird, two-time Oscar-winning director at Pixar for directing both The Incredibles and Ratatouille. His insights on how he got the animation teams to produce something four times as difficult for less money/minute and overall time IS incredible. And how he excited the "black sheep" to shake up the way they had been doing things up to that point is insightful. This article is particularly critical for those of you with creative teams i.e. software, PR, engineering, architectural, and accounting firms (OK, maybe not accounting -- we need to keep it legal!). What's even more amazing is that Bird was brought in to purposely shake up the status quo after he had just produced a financial disaster -- The Iron Giant.

Stickk on maximizing upfront cash and meeting goals -- thank you Matt Heinz, Senior Director of Marketing, Verdiem  -- Power Management for PC Networks -- for turning me onto this upfront cash machine -- a website called Stickk. Their tagline is "Put a Contract Out on Yourself." In essence, you pick a tough goal, establish the stakes, and pick a referee. Let's say you want to lose some weight and you put $50/week at stake. If you achieve your weekly goals, you get the money back. If not, it goes to charity or a friend or an anti-charity. Stickk doesn't actually get to keep any of the money in the end, but it gets to sit on the money (think interest) during the goal period. Here's a great explanation of the idea. I imagine many of your firms could do something similar to help people in your office achieve some personal goals -- and hey, if you're a little short of cash flow...J

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[Mike Michalowicz]

Fools make the markets healthy... at least I can say I am doing something healthy, after all.

- Mike