The Carrot Principle by Chester Elton — Book Brief

Hail the New Texting Champion!

There’s a contest for seemingly everything these days so I wasn’t surprised when I caught the news that we had crowned a new texting champion. That’s right, America has a new text message superstar, 15-year-old Kate Moore of Des Moines, Iowa.

Moore outpaced 20 finalists from around the country over two days of challenges such as texting blindfolded and texting while maneuvering through a moving obstacle course. Okay, there’s some creativity involved with that.

Let’s make it more meaningful

Maybe they should have added adult activities such as …

Kids and Working: We Need to Get to Them Earlier

Most managers look at the generation coming out of school with a fair degree of skepticism that they’ll be able to make a serious contribution early on.

To a large extent, this view is accurate. Most young women and men aren’t adequately prepared to deliver even minimum wage value. Often times it’s a lack of basic skills but, too frequently, it’s the attitude toward work.

A lot of kids want money and know they have to work to get it, but they don’t care much for actually doing it. Work looks boring, tedious, repetitive, uninspiring, and generally uncool. Maybe this is because we’ve…

How to Remind Yourself of What You Really Believe

I remember the first time I heard the line, “Those who can, do, and those who can’t, teach” — and I thought it was a strange viewpoint. Why can’t teachers “do” and “doers” teach? The truth is that they can, but the reality is it doesn’t happen as often as it should in a meaningful way.

I’m a bit unique in the world of trainers who lead courses on management and leadership, in that I actually…

The Power of (Re)creation

I have trained a lot of people over the years and the courses I originally wrote and produced have held up well throughout continual change.

Truth be known, I’ve changed a lot as well. Because I’m not the same person I was almost a decade ago when I created the initial materials, I prefer not to present some of those courses. The information is still solid and value is high, but I’ve moved on and…