You may find yourself in the same predicament at the office. I found an article that may give you some good tips on overcoming procrastination. Don’t procrastinate about learning to overcome procrastination! Enjoy.   

I first came across Daniel Pink, the author of Drive and A Whole New Mind, when we were both speaking at HRSouthwest 2011. I came across his message on "disruptive thinking" recently in an article on Wired.com.

The concept is simple and very practical. Most of our best ideas come at times when our daily tasks are disrupted. According to this article many companies even schedule “disruptive time” to encourage creativity. What would your disruptive time look like? Do any readers work in companies that encourage you to spend a portion of the week pursuing non-commissioned activities?

My research and personal experiences with leadership convince me that leaders are both born AND made. Each of us has a core of behavioral preferences that drive our thoughts and actions, which eventually influence outcomes. We can improve in all areas with some coaching, hard work, and a sufficient amount of time. But generally the fastest, strongest, and most gifted start with a “genetic foundation” of natural ability. Let me illustrate the meaning of a genetic foundation. As a college football coach I learned that I could teach any player to run faster with a lot of sprints, repetitive drills, weight training, etc., but my players could not escape their “genetic foundation.” Some young men came to me with natural foot speed and some did not. I could never teach the ones with less natural ability to run as fast as the young men with a better “genetic foundation.”

I also learned something else as a coach: Athletes with great natural talent sometimes fail to live up to their potential, especially when they lack dedication and effective coaching. Thus, athletes need both physical gifts (genetic foundation) and training in order to become great. I believe this applies to leadership as well. For this reason, it is important to select leaders with the best “genetic foundation” for the job and then pour extensive effort into shaping and molding their natural talents. Remember that without proper nurturing and exercise, talent will wither away.

What has been your experience in the development of leaders?

Leveraging data to make wise business decisions makes good dollars and cents. However, an organization’s ability to leverage the data relies on the type of data captured. Much of the press related to Big Data seems to focus on its various uses but not the TYPE of data to best grow your business. I am hoping that we will begin to see tips and hints for improved methods of capturing employee-level data.

Have you come across any interesting articles on best practices for collecting objective employee performance data such as throughput numbers, metrics, etc?

My kids seem to enjoy a real challenge where they have to actually hunt around in search of the elusive eggs. As they become more experienced egg hunters they discover the key is to know where to look. They take pride in finding those eggs that no one else could find.

Finding good talent is more like a really challenging Easter egg hunt, not one of those 10,000-eggs-out-in-an-open-field type of hunts. You must know where to look to find talent that suits you. There is a good article in INC. magazine that highlights some places that may help you source good talent. 

Did they leave any secret places out? Do you have any other good ideas?

It makes sense that using games would have a wide variety of applications in the workforce. I recently came across an article in Technology Review that advocates anything that can be measured can be made into a game. The concept may well gain traction with the new generation that has grown up gaming. But I would love to hear your thoughts on the actual utility and value of leveraging a game to hire, train, and develop employees. Any thoughts?

Recently, he decided that he wanted to learn to ride a bike without training wheels. So he talked his older brother into teaching him. The result was amazing. In about 20 minutes, my little boy had full control of his bike. By Day Two, he was meeting me at the end of our very long driveway as I came home from work, and he rode without assistance the entire way.

It reminded me of what we are capable of if we put our mind to it. The next time you say you “can’t,” maybe you should say “I just don’t want to.” Four years old--wow, I think I was much older when I learned to ride.

There he goes!Enjoy the video.

How am I going to get this in my briefcase? (For more on this image, search "ENIAC.")

I remember buying a desktop computer in the early 2000's that offered about 3 GB of space, 256 MB of RAM, and all of it churning at a blazing 333 MHz. Now my cell phone has 10 times the storage space of that computer, while my rather average laptop works at a speed of 2.4 GHz. Here are the mind-blowing ways we now measure available storage (thanks to http://www.whatsabyte.com/):

Processor or Virtual Storage

1 Bit = Binary Digit
8 Bits = 1 Byte
1024 Bytes = 1 Kilobyte
1024 Kilobytes = 1 Megabyte
1024 Megabytes = 1 Gigabyte
1024 Gigabytes = 1 Terabyte
1024 Terabytes = 1 Petabyte
1024 Petabytes = 1 Exabyte
1024 Exabytes = 1 Zettabyte
1024 Zettabytes = 1 Yottabyte
1024 Yottabytes = 1 Brontobyte
1024 Brontobytes = 1 Geopbyte

A quote attributed to Bill Gates says, "640K ought to be enough for anybody." If only that were true. At PeopleAnswers, we invest heavily in what our research tells us is the bigger, better multi-server configuration to store and access billions of bytes of data 24/7, which our clients then use as a component in their decision science regarding who to hire. Is your company getting more and more into a big data environment? Add a comment and let's discuss...

Since small innovations can make a big impact, how can we encourage daily innovation in our workforce? I came across a fun article that describes research projects that promoted innovative thinking. Do you ever take a different route to work? How about building a sandwich in reverse of your usual method or maybe mixing up your daily activities to keep you out of a rut? Well, all of these simple actions appear to improve innovation.

Do you sometimes mix up your routines and, if so, how does it make you more innovative in your thinking?