Month: February 2025

leadership dot #4526: Loveuary

February 8, 2025January 31, 2025by leadership dots by dr. beth triplettLeave a comment

Hallmark has anchored much of their brand around Christmas, capitalizing on the appeal of their ornaments and romantic holiday movies. They have decided to leverage this success and attempt to extend it into February with their “Loveuary” campaign. “Loveuary” features a new collection of movies on the Hallmark Channel, “Where Love Happens.”

It’s an example of a Bright Spot that Dan Heath promoted in Reset — finding something that is working and replicating it. If cheesy rom-coms are popular, why not produce more of them? If February is about love, who better to provide the cards with mushy messages? Unlike many brands these days, it’s a natural tie-in that actually promotes the core product.

Is there a Bright Spot in your organization that could be expanded with some love?

leadership dot #4525: curve ball

February 7, 2025January 29, 2025by leadership dots by dr. beth triplettLeave a comment

Before he enters the stage to conduct our symphony orchestra, the maestro says: “Into the unknown.” He is aware that while they have a plan for the performance, it’s a live event, and not everything may go as expected. He walks onto the platform confident that he will handle any “unknowns” thrown his way.

In reality, all of us enter into the unknown every day. We may have an idea of what we’d like to accomplish or a calendar full of commitments that map out our time, but reality may look entirely different. We say “I do” to a partner or adopt a baby, but relationships are all entering the unknowable.

Instead of being surprised or even angered when life throws a curve ball, adopt the philosophy of our maestro. Trust in your ability to handle whatever “into the unknown” brings you.

leadership dot #4524: fragmented

February 6, 2025January 31, 2025by leadership dots by dr. beth triplettLeave a comment

“Where does the time go?” is a question we have all asked ourselves. If you’re serious about understanding how you use your time, one strategy is to keep a time log for a week or so, accounting for every minute of each day.

Author Brigid Schulte did just that, and she learned that she did have more free time than she thought she did — but that it was all in fragments, so it didn’t feel like it amounted to much. She described her situation as “time confetti — and really, what does a pile of confetti ever amount to?” You can’t fully experience leisure when it’s a few minutes here and a few more minutes there, just as you can’t deeply concentrate on a project or develop a relationship when all you have is small increments.

Understanding this fragmentation is the first step in changing it. Whether through blocking time, focused sprints, advanced scheduling, shutting your door, batching tasks, or saying no, working to consolidate the bits into larger periods is a worthwhile effort. Confetti may be wonderful at a party, but not as a time management practice.

Source: Brigid Schulte in Overwhelmed as quoted in Reset by Dan Heath, 2025, p. 104-105.

leadership dot #4523: progress

February 5, 2025January 31, 2025by leadership dots by dr. beth triplettLeave a comment

In many of my workshops, I am asked about motivation and how to inspire people to do what needs to get done. It’s a challenge people face in their personal lives as well, needing the gumption to dig deep and get out of bed to go to the gym or to tackle that lawn.

Researchers studied over 12,000 entries in daily diaries workers kept to reflect on their work. The results showed: “Of all the things that can boost emotions, motivation, and perceptions during the workday, the single most important is making progress in meaningful work.”

Think about that: making progress is the big motivator, but too many times we operate in ways that obfuscate progress. We fail to develop benchmarks that can help people see they are moving ahead. We don’t take the time to tell stories, save documents, and reflect back on how far we have come. We don’t set clear goals so we know when we can plant the flag and celebrate the completion of this phase.

Making progress in meaningful work. Keep that front and center as you give assignments, plan projects, make resolutions, or have one-on-one conversations with your team. How will you know when you are doing it?

Source: Study by Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer as cited in Reset by Dan Heath, 2025, page xxi.

leadership dot #4522: restack

February 4, 2025January 28, 2025by leadership dots by dr. beth triplettLeave a comment

Yesterday (dot #4521), I wrote about the book Reset and the first strategy of Finding Leverage Points. Once you have found them, you need to deploy the second strategy of Restacking Resources in order to capitalize on the leverage you identified.

Author Dan Heath is intentional about “restacking” and acknowledges that for most, there will be no new staff or resource allocations forthcoming. By reallocating the assets you do have, organizations can make an impact on its outcomes. Six ways to consider restacking:

Start with a Burst — Kick off your change effort with a concentrated sprint of activity
Recycle Waste — Waste = anything that doesn’t equal value in your customer’s eyes, especially downtime
Do Less and Do More — Change is not AND; it’s INSTEAD of. Swap out where you place effort
Tap Motivation — Finding the intersection of “what’s required” and “what’s desired”
Let People Drive — Provide guardrails for alignment but allow autonomy in the change effort
Accelerate Learning — Find ways to gather feedback quickly and make adjustments

The strategies in Reset can help break through the excuses and inertia that develop when change seems overwhelming or progress is stagnant. Instead of lamenting that you don’t have “more,” consider some of these ideas to restack and reenergize what you do have.

Source: Reset: How to Change What’s Not Working by Dan Heath, 2025

leadership dot #4521: reset

February 3, 2025January 28, 2025by leadership dots by dr. beth triplettLeave a comment

In his new book Reset, author Dan Heath outlines a two-part strategy that can help you or your organization change how you work. The first action is to “find leverage points” — places where a small effort can yield a large return.

Heath likens change to trying to move a giant boulder, but finding the right spot to intervene can make that task possible. To identify leverage points, consider one of five actions:

Go and see the work — Shadow the process and follow the workflow to identify bottlenecks
Consider the goal of the goal — Be open-minded to alternate strategies to achieve your goal
Study the bright spots — Find what’s working and replicate that
Target the constraint — Fix your #1 trouble spot, then continuously fix your next #1 spot
Map the system — Gather people who can outline how the interdependent process works

In typical Heath fashion, the book is full of actionable steps that illustrate the points and make the strategies seem imminently manageable, including stories from a school, government office, market research firm, restaurant drive-thru, and radiology clinic, which all identified leverage points that substantially improved their outcomes.

Initiating a change effort can often feel so overwhelming. Instead of seeing big problems without a solution, think about using one of these tools to find small places where your effort can catalyze progress and create momentum.

Source: Reset: How to Change What’s Not Working, by Dan Heath, 2025

leadership dot #4520: no matter

February 2, 2025January 29, 2025by leadership dots by dr. beth triplettLeave a comment

A packet of office supplies I received for Christmas came with a note from the seller. In addition to thanking me for my purchase, I was informed that if I was not happy with my order, “NO MATTER HOW LONG IT HAS BEEN” (their caps), to contact them for a replacement or refund, no questions asked! Now, that is a customer service policy!

I doubt many (any) people will return the item given the nature of what it is, but what a reassuring and generous statement to make. The note continued by saying “This product was made with love by Mr. Pen — a group of teachers from Louisiana.” It makes you believe that they would honor their refund policy.

Think about the message you provide to your customers. First, do you thank them for their purchase, and second, do you encourage full satisfaction without restrictions? Intentionally communicating your values is good for business.

leadership dot #4519: pipes

February 1, 2025January 31, 2025by leadership dots by dr. beth triplettLeave a comment

It’s not unusual to see exposed pipes in commercial buildings, but usually, they are painted in ways to minimize their appearance. Not so at Navy Pier in Chicago.

Their pipes have become billboards to promote the value of water with many of them featuring factoids or quotes relating to the substance. Examples include:

There is the same amount of water on Earth as there was when the Earth was created
The first water pipes in the U.S. were made from hollowed logs
“If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water.” Loren Eisley
Water is the regulator of both the planet and your body’s temperature
It takes 120 gallons of water to produce one egg
Water is the only mineral that is found naturally on Earth in three forms: liquid, gas, solid
Groundwater can take a human lifetime just to traverse a mile
“A lake is the landscape’s most beautiful and expressive feature.” Henry David Thoreau
Most of the Earth’s surface water is permanently frozen or salty

It took some effort to develop and place all these sayings as they were on most groupings of pipes throughout the large complex, but it added to the ambiance far more than plain pipes would have done.

Think about what you can do to capitalize on the quirks of your space and use it to make it uniquely yours.