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Junkyard Management

Blues Brothers, Junkyard Style

Remember the scene in The Blues Brothers when John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd drove the decommissioned police car through Chicago in a classic chase scene? The other day I had a flashback of an experience like that, but without the police chasing me.

I was in high school and my Dad had purchased a decommissioned police car at auction. It still had the distinctive black and white paint like the California Highway Patrol. It also had the souped up engine that flat out flew.

Dad asked me and my buddy Mike to pick it up in the East Bay …

Junkyard Management,

Six Ways to Motivate

Last year I was invited to write an article for Outreach Magazine about how to motivate your team. I’ve reworked the article to make it a little edgier and shorter for my Junkyard Wisdom audience.

Oh, and the photo of our new puppy Holly above? No connection at all to this article. I just liked the photo and thought you’d enjoy seeing her!

Anyway, here goes:

1. Don’t Make Lists of six or ten or any number. Seriously. Who wants to feel like they are being managed by a list? Nobody. The thing about lists is that they’re always linear, …

Junkyard Management, Leadership, Salvaged,

Make a Small Mess

Make a small bet. It’s an organizational maxim meaning to test an idea or run an experiment on a small scale before investing significant time or money.

It’s a great practice that has saved me from big mistakes.

One of the chapters I didn’t write for Salvaged was Make a Small Mess. It’s the same principle, but in a distinctively junkyard mindset. Whatever you might do is likely to create a mess. So keep it small. See if the results are worth the mess. Experiment with a small mess before making a really BIG mess.

Pretty cool idea, don’t you …

Junkyard Management, Leadership,

What Do You Want To Learn?

In my upcoming book Salvaged there’s a chapter focused on the power of asking good questions. A recent question I asked of a young man who wanted to be mentored is a case in point.

He’s in his mid-30’s, an intelligent guy, married with kids, doing his best to live a faithful life. There’s much to admire about this young man, and I wanted to say that up front because I’m about to make him sound really stupid.

He asked to meet with me, and the timing worked, so I agreed. Eventually, awkwardly, he got around to asking me if …

Junkyard Management, Leadership,

The Opportunity to be Wrong

A simple way to broaden your leadership impact is to give your team the opportunity to be wrong. The old mantra “you learn from your mistakes” can be taken to an extreme of course — we should probably learn far more from our successes. But being wrong about something and having it blow up in our face is a huge growth opportunity. And we need to give our team the opportunity to make those mistakes.

A few years ago I was enjoying a glass of wine (and probably a cigar) with a leader who had built a successful organization. He …

Junkyard Management, Leadership,

Ownership Matters

Hopefully we can all agree that ownership matters to the success or failure of an endeavor. But I think we still undervalue the importance of ownership.

You may have heard the old maxim, “Leadership casts a long shadow.” Indeed it does. Anyone who has worked under wise and responsible leadership knows how it can permeate an organization with healthy values. Alternatively, anyone who has worked under foolish and irresponsible leadership knows how corrupting it can become.

So yes, leadership casts a long shadow. But ownership might cast an even longer one. Certainly this is true in business — who owns …

Junkyard Management, Random Thoughts, Wine Reviews,

Generosity Without Money

Since writing Junkyard Wisdom I’m often asked a simple question about generosity: how can we be generous without a lot of money?

Plenty of people think generosity is mostly about giving money away to worthy causes. It’s about sponsoring a child, supporting a youth sports league, contributing to the arts, etc.

Other people think generosity is about giving your time. Volunteering at a homeless shelter or tutoring a struggling student, for instance.

Both definitions are legitimate — we need people who give generous of their time and treasure.

But a lot of people overlook valuable assets in their generosity toolbox: …

Goble Properties, Junkyard Management,

Nobody Cares if You’re the Smartest Person in the Room

Many years ago, I joined a board of directors for a reasonably large organization. It was an honor to be invited, and I wanted to help the organization in the best possible way. As the board discussions covered finance, marketing, staff compensation, and any number of other issues, I did my best to offer my thoughts on all the subjects.

Perhaps I wanted to do a bit too much, though. After one particularly long conversation about a new campaign launch, one of the longest-serving board members, who was a good 20 years older than me, pulled me aside. He asked …