Just about every company has some kind of organizational structure that divides people into departments or business functions or geographic units, or all of the above.

As much as businesses need these structural divisions to organize work, information and ideas have to flow across them. Only then can people make informed tradeoffs and decisions, and keep the various parts of the business coordinated. Decisions are smarter and execution is faster.

There’s no structural fix that can ensure that information and ideas flow freely. It’s up to all of us to shape relationships among our peers in order to share more, coordinate better, and work toward a common purpose…

read the rest at: An Undiscovered Path to Personal Growth: What Every Company Should Know – Yahoo! Finance

Leading Ideas: Don’t Let Talk Parade as Action

Doug takes a moment to talk about something that many people are guilty of: Reading something great….and doing nothing different.“Consider This:

It’s subtle and pervasive in many corporate cultures. Talk substituting for action. I’ve often found a frequent offender to be the manager who’s gung-ho about a new management book. He likes the concepts. He talks about them often. He gets others to read the book. They like them too. The book’s jargon makes its way into their everyday language. Everyone’s excited to be on board with the latest management thinking. Amidst the excitement, everyone fails to realize a simple fact. They’re not actually putting the concepts into practice. They’re just talking about them. Eventually cynicism follows the delusion because nothing really changes. The book is put on the shelf. Then someone finds a new book…”

As Zig Ziglar often says “The most practical, beautiful, workable philosophy in the world won’t work–if you won’t.”

Profitable growth is the No. 1 business imperative today. But the need for companies to grow, and all the media and leadership attention it attracts, shouldn’t obscure an equally important need — your own personal need to grow.

In fact, for knowledge workers and leaders there’s no more important question than “Is my personal growth in tune with the changing external landscape?” Are you learning new skills, building on your knowledge base, gaining new experiences, and carefully scrutinizing the ways you’ve traditionally viewed and approached your work?

If not, now’s the time to make personal growth a top priority.

Read Part 1 and Part 2
From Ziglar.com

• Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment.
• We must all suffer from one of two pains: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. The difference is discipline weighs ounces while regret weighs tons.
• All disciplines affect each other. Mistakenly the man says, “This is the only area where I let down.” Not true. Every let down affects the rest. Not to think so is naive.
• Discipline is the foundation upon which all success is built. Lack of discipline inevitably leads to failure.
• Discipline has within it the potential for creating future miracles.
• The best time to set up a new discipline is when the idea is strong.
• One discipline always leads to another discipline.
• Affirmation without discipline is the beginning of delusion.
• You don’t have to change that much for it to make a great deal of difference. A few simple disciplines can have a major impact on how your life works out in the next 90 days, let alone in the next 12 months or the next 3 years.
• The least lack of discipline starts to erode our self-esteem.

www.jimrohn.com