by mmartyn | Jan 25, 2011 | Best Practices, Changing Behavior, Development, Growth, Human Behavior, Leadership
“No one appreciates the agonizing effort (Miyamoto) Musashi has made. Now that his years of training have yielded spectacular results, everybody talks about his “God-given talent.” That’s how men who don’t try very hard comfort themselves.” – Yoshikawa Eiji...
by mmartyn | Nov 30, 2010 | Best Practices, Continuous Improvement, Creativity, Design, Development, Innovation, Leadership, Motivation, Results
A $2,000 car? The Chairman of Suzuki Motor Corporation said it was impossible…but, that didn’t deter Ratan Tata. Motivated by a passion for meeting the needs of India’s impoverished people, the Chairman of Tata Motors assembled a five person engineering team...
by mmartyn | Nov 11, 2010 | Best Practices, Creativity, Culture, Design, Development, Leadership
The Riverside School in Ahmedabad, India is an amazing experiment in empowering children and creating future leaders. Founded in 2001, Kiram Bir Sethi and her team have created a unique learning environment where “common sense is common practice” and the overriding...
by mmartyn | Nov 2, 2010 | Brain, Creativity, Development, Innovation, Motivation, Problem Solving
In his work as an educational theorist, John Dewey believed that discovery-based education yielded the best learning. By allowing learners to connect with information through participation and experimentation they engaged more fully and identified new ideas and...
by mmartyn | Oct 28, 2010 | Changing Behavior, Development, Human Behavior, Leadership, Organizational Structure, Visual Management
I have written before about the importance of the structure and physical space in driving the development of right behaviors in an organization. On my last trip to Japan, I was again stuck by the way the japanese use physical space and organizational structure to...
by mmartyn | Oct 26, 2010 | Best Practices, Changing Behavior, Development, Engagement, Human Behavior
A few years ago, I was challenged to create a sales boot camp to significantly reduce the time it took to master the selling process in a retail furniture environment. Whereas it had previously taken 6-12 months to train a new sales person, our goal was to do it 90...
