Learning Bytes by Steve Semler

Don’t you love it when you get into a state of flow? Flow is when things are rushing along easily and you are so engaged and productive that you don’t even notice time passing. Your performance feels almost effortless. How much of your time are you spending in a flow state? In an interview with Wired magazine Mihaly Csíkszentmihályi, the psychologist who coined the term “flow” for this kind of mental state, described flow as "being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego...

Nobody expected us to move the business to Poland. But there it was. Word came down from headquarters, “Get ready. We’re offshoring your entire business unit.” I use the experience as an example of how even the elimination of your job can create opportunities if you look for the positive. I had been hired to grow a brand new training department. I was to build talent and create pipelines for career mobility and advancement, as well as to upgrade business and leadership skills. The division...

Accountability is a funny thing. It means one is responsible for the results of some activity. One can be “called to account” for the actions and results needed. It implies a counting up of results against what the person accepted responsibility to do. For example, if you're going to eat a fish dinner tonight, someone has to catch the fish. How do you hold yourself accountable for results? To be accountable, you have to act. Image by Artur Tumasjan on Unsplash I find that this can be a...

We talk a lot about “data-driven decision making.” But in the real world, a lot of our decision making is influenced by our habits of thinking. Data is secondary, even for people who pride themselves on being data-driven decision-makers. It’s in our wetware. We go to what we're used to doing, first. Then, if we're in a good mental state we will look for data to check our initial assumptions. Tip of the Day: Check your mood when making a decision. Is it curious and positive? If not, use PQ...

One of my friends describes the human brain as “thinky meats.” That’s not too far off, really! We use this roughly 3-pound, finely-developed chunk of “thinky meat” all the time, for interpreting what we take in through our senses, for deciding what is and is not true, for solving problems and reaching goals, and for feeling emotions and connecting with other people. Image by Bruno Ngarukiye on Unsplash, overlay by ChatGPT What you think about strengthens your neural connections to that thing....

There are a lot of good uses for custom business cases. They can expose people to new ideas or situations or document important decisions made by the organization. A good business case tells an exciting story right up to the point of the critical decision. Readers are hooked, they are into the story, they understand what’s at stake and how it matters. Then the story stops and asks, “What would you do?” This gets them to move from passive consumption to active thought and innovation. The...

This week I received two separate links to articles I thought were outstanding. I want to share one of these with you about how you can avoid a very common leadership trap. In his article, “Everyone lies to leaders,” Jade Rubrick has captured what happens to all leaders promoted to a senior level. People start lying to them, or at least concealing anything “bad.” And their ideas suddenly all become praiseworthy. What gives? He explores the reasoning for this just as well as I could, and...

When you’re faced with a major change opportunity, how do you decide what is worth changing? That can be confusing, so let me explain. For the last two years, and really since 2016, I have been working in an entrepreneurial mode. I have done a lot of great work through my LearningSim business. In 2022 I added on coaching services with FocalPoint. Steve Semler, LearningSim banner But along the way, I discovered that I am a “reluctant entrepreneur.” I work really well with a business partner...