The intention to become a high performance company, or the intention to become a high performance team will not attract high performers. It may attract curiosity. It may attract attention to your attempts, but you will not receive commendations for trying. The only measure of performance is performance. You will only attract high performers when...

Most companies read all the books and hire all the best consultants so they can pursue the path to be the best. When I visit the offices of most CEOS, they have the same books on the shelf, the same slogans on the wall. It looks like a desperate attempt to be be as good as everyone else. Your company can’t be high performing AND be like everyone...

Who do you listen to for advice? There is good advice and bad advice. Some advice leads to abject failure, some advice leads to success. What is the difference? Between failure and success is average. What advice leads to average success? Action that leads to high performance is different than action that leads you to average performance. If you know...

From the Ask Tom mailbag – Question: I just finished your TimeSpan101 online course and have a question. When interviewing, is it possible to assess potential capability? I imagine that one can listen if applied capability is at current role’s stratum or above? Although this technique doesn’t allow for one to assess an individual’s ability to learn....

An important tool for personal efficiency is the calendar. It allows us to synchronize our time with other people and events. To be even more efficient, our calendar lets us see the white space between things. A time management principle called chunking tells us to put things together, combine, to get rid of that white space. Soon, we have full...

One foot in order and one foot in chaos. It is important for a company to get good at something and be able to deliver that in an efficient manner. That’s order. Simultaneously, a company must spend time improving its product or service, discovering a new product or service, finding a new market segment. That’s chaos. A company cannot sock away...