The Simplest Thing That Works

Look - a great blog

NinaSimosko.com .

I love discovering new (to me) blogs.  Here's a good one.  It's by a young woman named Nina Simosko, and I really like the way she thinks.  Here's how she describes her blog:

This blog provides aspiring leaders with a forum to investigate ideas, innovations and approaches to leadership. I welcome your thoughts on these topics or any other that affects the “nature of work" and the advancement of women in the corporate world.

At the risk of sounding enormously old, I think it's this next generation of women like Nina who are creating the world of work that I want to see; the one that takes full advantage of everyone's gifts and talents. 

Take a Break

Link: The Heart of Innovation.

I believe this is the longest hiatus I've ever taken from my blog; if you've wondered where I've been, I just got back from a marvelous vacation. I spent a week in Barbados with my daughter: lying on the beach; drinking far more than is my usual wont; eating fresh seafood -- basically lazing around. And the internet connection was iffy at best, which I took as the universe's way of telling me to chill out. Here's a pic of the beach that was about a two minute-walk from our wonderful guesthouse.

So, here I am again, recharged and ready to go. One of the things I wanted to do when I got back to blogging was introduce you to my friend Mitch Ditkoff's blog. And lo and behold, his latest post is about the importance of taking breaks. Serendipity.

Mitch calls himself the Archduke of Idea Champions, his own company, which he describes as:

a consulting and training company dedicated to awakening and nurturing the spirit of innovation. We help individuals, teams and entire organizations tap into their innate ability to create, develop and implement ideas that make a difference.

I encourage you to explore his blog: Mitch is a wonderful person, an endless font of interesting and worthwhile ideas, an untiring supporter of others' ideas, and the author of the newly published book, Awake at the Wheel.

Props to Phil

Link: Make It Great! with Phil Gerbyshak: Growing Great Employees: Erika Andersen on Management (part 1).

I was just reading Phil Gerbyshak's fun, inspiring blog tonight, and I realized I've never mentioned him here. I feel remiss.

Phil has seemingless endless energy, and wide-ranging interests...check out his blog and you'll see what I mean. He also has been a big fan and promoter of my book -- for which I feel very grateful -- and invited me to do an e-interview with him about the book; the first part is the link above.

This is one of the lovely and unexpected things that's happened since Growing Great Employees was published; I've discovered this big community online of folks who are genuinely interested in making work better, more engaging, more productive, more satisfying. They're smart, curious, irreverent and energetic.

I know this blog thing has been happening for awhile - but I'm thrilled that I've now engaged in this realm, and encourage all of you to do the same, if you haven't already.

800-CEO-READ Blog

I've written before about the folks at 800CEOREAD, for whom I have tremendous respect. Jack Covert, his partner, Todd Sattersten, and their great team not only provide a wonderful service to the business community by offering great customer service and discount prices on books (any quantity, anywhere in the world, standard or personalized), but they've also become the go-to resource for insight into which of the thousands of business books published every month are worth reading and why.

So I find myself both humbled and honored to find that Jack has chosen Growing Great Employees as his "Jack Covert Selects" pick for today. Thank you, Jack.