Small Ball

Small Ball

Recently an executive leading a newly integrated business said she was not interested in playing “small ball.”  On several occasions, almost always as a response to a question of why his initiatives were so big / controversial / sweeping, former President George W. Bush said he didn’t like to play “small ball.”

Small ball is a baseball term, a reference to getting several base hits, playing it safe, and marching players towards home plate in a methodical, low-risk fashion.  The idea is that you don’t swing for the fences, because you might miss and never get to base at all.  Better instead to swing to just get on base – not to score.

If you have 100 innings to play, a 100-run lead, and a strong pitching staff, it’s easy to play small ball.  There is time, and the law of averages is on your side.Small ball is playing not to lose.

Foreclosures: what you need to know (a re-post from 2007)

This is a piece I had published in December 2007.  As the pundits and reporters spin us out of the Great Recession, I thought it might be interesting to look back at my thoughts from a couple of years ago - as the pundits were spinning us into the Second Great Depression.  Enjoy. :)

-Bryan

Foreclosures: what you need to know

Bryan Seaford©2007

Things we learn by age two

Some friends of mine and I were talking the other day about human development, and how quickly we learn. As I thought more about how we develop – and when we develop, my thoughts turned to a time not too long ago when my son had just turned two years old. By that age, so much has already been learned.

Proxy voting: owning the firm - a follow up

Speaking of owning the firm, here's a note from Wealth-Bulletin.com, noting that "Investors are more careful with their own money."

You get the gist of the article in the first few sentences, so here's the rest:  firms with family ownership (as defined by Oddo, an investment firm in Paris), perform better than others. :)

Proxy voting: owning the firm

This is a very busy time of year for some, and not just because we’re close to the U.S. federal tax deadline.  Over the past three weeks or so, I’ve received at least 15 information packets through the mail from various firms.  The packets typically include an annual report, a 10-K SEC filing, and a card for voting the shares I hold in the firm.  On top of the mailed packets are the electronic proxies.  Because of the way my investments are structured, some firms send me multiple copies of material – always with a request to complete my proxy.

Instructional Design

Great and enduring leaders are also great and enduring teachers. In organizations, the function is usually called learning, training, development, or some combination of the three. In short, the idea is to equip the team with the knowledge to make both the team and the individual successful.

Delivering quality training is more than simply telling the team to “do what I do and you'll pick it up.” It requires a thoughtful design process that develops the content necessary to make the team successful.

On-boarding well

If you've ever been on a cruise, you know it takes more than a couple of minutes to actually make it from port to actually getting on the ship. It's a long process of the crew making sure you're supposed to be on the ship, you learning what you can and can't do while on board, finding your cabin, learning what do do in an emergency, and so on.

The process of introducing someone new to a team is called “on-boarding.” Sometimes it's written without the hyphen (“onboarding”), and I firmly believe the only reason the powers that be keep the hyphen is to avoid a spell check flag in office documents. :)