Over 15 years ago – I was deep in chaos with a fast growing team and company. Every day was like a week, every week like a month, and every month like a year. Time was flying and we had to make decisions fast to keep up with the speed of growth and the market. We were struggling – working way too many hours and the pile of things to get done and decisions to be made continued to get longer. It was the unending uphill battle.

I was at a conference that Verne Harnish was MC’ing and he kept talking about “The Huddle”. I finally went up to him at a break and asked “What is ‘The Huddle’?” Verne answered – “Easy – 15 minutes or less every day with your team following a standing agenda of Good News, Top Priority For The Day and Where Are You Stuck”.

Why does this work:

1. THE NAME HUDDLE – comes from a team executing on the field to win the game. Quick meeting before the play and then execute the play....

When I was out there looking for my first job(s) – I was looking for a place to go to make money. Looking back on it and on my resume in my early 20s, I had quite a few jobs for many different reasons. But mostly because I was making bad choices on the people I was going to work with and focused on the money I would be making in the job rather than making sure it was a great place to work where I could be successful.

So in a very adhoc way, in an interview process, I started to realize I could assess my fit, ask questions and evaluate the people interviewing me. When I was just graduating with my first degree, I got an interview with IBM. I actually knew I was not a good fit for them but wanted to get more experience in the interview process and confirm to myself that I would not be a good fit.

Maybe at the time I should not have wasted IBMs time BUT I was young and not that experienced with interviewing and knew IBM had a solid process so they could find other people...

Ever lead a dream team that doesn’t get along?  Both in athletics and my work, I have experienced bringing together the best skilled people possible where a few of the team members didn’t get along. Normal or not? 

Actually, this happens more often than not.  In my first company we were on a roll and hiring non-stop.  As the CEO – my leadership team was growing. We were hiring on skill and experience and giving little consideration for “fit”.  We had leaders that openly didn’t get along. In these situations there is a lot of energy wasted.

When leadership team members openly don’t get along, it stifles a lot of things in your company but mainly your ability to grow.  The leadership team must be the most cohesive team in the company and lead by example.  I have led and been on many leadership teams where not everyone “luved” one another – but there was...