Author: Mike Vacanti
31 Aug A New Season
The air is cooler at night. The breeze is stronger, yet soothing, refreshing. The season is changing. Looking at my calendar for the week, I pause, reflect and consciously choose my mindset as the flood of conflicting thoughts race through my head. In a few weeks I’ll...
28 Aug Is Change Hard?
CHANGE Change is still hard. Our deeply engrained beliefs about rigidity and control are the root of the challenge, rather than the psychological resistance of individuals. Our focus is misplaced. We think the approach to create positive change is mentally conditioning the affected individuals, to break their...
05 Aug Finding Happiness – Really?
Working with leaders and teams to raise the level of possibility through the I_AM_TEAM high-achievement workshop program, I discovered that a large percentage of employees were not in a good place. Many were down-sliding and trying to hang on, much less ready to embrace the...
19 Jul Boxes, Cliches and Disengaged Teams
"I'm fine." "Great." On we go. We know they're not fine and on another day we ask them what was happening, to which we'll get a reply like, "I'm just really type-A and things were piling up." People say type-A because it's perceived as a good thing,...
11 Jun Help, HR: Now Is The Time of Need & Opportunity
Now is the time of need and the greatest opportunity for HR to step into the most critical role for corporate success, wellness and sustainable growth. Until HR is willing to let go of the nonsense, they will not achieve what is necessary. any of the low-value,...
20 Apr Bad Boss Epidemic
Our challenge - our greatest opportunity is teaching great business skills and even better people skills. There is very little material to draw from over the past couple centuries for “good-people” development in business. There were historic periods of these ideals in earlier centuries, and...
09 Jan What’s Your Super-Power? Know it & Grow it.
We all have skills. They vary one person to the next. We’ve developed our existing skills and added new ones. It’s the intentional exercising of these strengths that allow us to achieve reward and joy. We also have a gift, of which we may or may...
02 Jan 16 Dumb Cliches to Purge for 2018
Kicking off the new year, looking forward to the journey ahead, your most critical decision is what to leave behind. Dropping the junk in your head and heart will allow space for inspiration, inviting in the new experiences, new people and new ideas for the...
01 Dec Who do You Trust?
For 25 years of my life, being in a sport team environment where winning was the only purpose, I learned a lot of the lessons of team trust. And then for 20 years after that, coaching kids, boys and girls, different ages and different skill sets,...
29 Nov A Fixed Mindset Is Killing Employee Engagement
You must have a plan to innovate. People are your brand and you need to engage them. From talent acquisition and on-boarding, through the employee journey, the fixed mindset of HR programs is blocking solutions to this growing problem. Challenge recruiting patterns and methods, test new learning...
01 Sep Functional Talent beats Industry Experience
'Industry Experience' is industrial debris for companies in a high growth phase - or desire to grow at all. "Industry-thinking is Industrial Debris" There’s no mistaking that every business is affected by a tightening talent pool and need for specialized skills. Add this to transformational pressures, coupled...
13 May 3 Great Meals and A Rotten Strategy
The day promised to be a great day in business. Team was all together, we had a great line up of speakers, insightful training and the anticipation of a cohesive and comprehensive strategy was good reason for excitement. There had been significant restructuring at the Board/CEO level and...
02 May #1 Difference Between Managing and Leading
This topic is often discussed, debated and will remain fluid. There is not a simple truth, it is a stream from black to white with the "honeypot" somewhere in the grey. I have worked for many managers and navigated strategic transformations through acquisitions, roll ups, executive leadership...
22 Apr Decide to Fix the Problem
Companies are a collection of humans and humans make the business decisions. Leaders are human. So, when faced with a business decision, leaders use a lot more than logic to make those decisions. Therefore, sometimes instead of solving a problem, the problem actually becomes more...
14 Apr Meeting Effectiveness: “READY, BREAK!”
I love that we are now in an "agile-method" world, so the lingo is "huddle" although in many cases, it is the same old meeting. I remember the first day walking into the weekly review meeting as the new group leader for a large team....
11 Apr Alignment Is The Key To Sales Performance
Performance from the sales team is essential to meeting corporate goals. That's obvious. We experience this everyday through calls, meetings, reports and reviews - sales people feel the pressure. The pressure is natural and normal and it should not be lessoned or eliminated, it needs be channeled...
05 Apr GETTING THAT NEW JOB
The day of acceptance for a new job is an exciting one. All the good motivators bounce around in your head and your gut; Anticipation, ambition, a little fear of the unknown, new digs/people/clients and activities await, and the past career chapter is officially complete....
17 Dec Spark Performance During Change
Most of us have been through productivity training. The training has been focused on tools, platforms, methods and processes specific to a professional discipline. In technology, cloud innovation and adoption requires new thinking to achieve the transformative promise, and therefore needs strong education, training and...