by Brooks Mendell | Jun 14, 2020 | Communication Skills, Leading/Managing, Thinking/Analysis
In my roles as a business advisor and as a team leader, I have the opportunity to continually discuss and test ideas on managing and making decisions, especially in turbulent times. The intensity and urgency of these conversations increased with the arrival in 2020 of...
by Brooks Mendell | May 25, 2020 | Communication Skills, Leading/Managing
In college at MIT, I played baseball for Coach Fran O’Brien. MIT hired Coach O’Brien in 1969. In the twenty seasons prior to Coach O’Brien’s arrival, MIT Baseball had one winning season. He inherited a Division-III, no scholarship, no recruiting team that expected to...
by Brooks Mendell | Mar 18, 2020 | Communication Skills, Forestry, Learning, Thinking/Analysis
“Without a structured approach to ordering the world, the world will impose its views on us. The fact is some things are more important than others, some things are easily verifiable…Simple processes help us sort the mess and prioritize.” from “Managing Risk by...
by Brooks Mendell | Jun 28, 2018 | Communication Skills
Since clipping on my first tie as a child, I’ve sat through many a wedding speech. Unfortunately, most memorable speeches and toasts carved out mental real estate in my head for the wrong reasons: they went awry or too long or both. Those ‘toasts gone bad’ motivated...
by Brooks Mendell | Mar 8, 2018 | Communication Skills, Leading/Managing, Sports
Who is the most important person on your team? As much as we’re “all created equal,” we join and work with teams comprised of higher performers and lower performers. Some salespeople exceed quota; others struggle to keep up. In sports, most players, at any given...
by Brooks Mendell | Jun 7, 2017 | Communication Skills, Sports
At times, you will feel compelled or asked to share your opinion in a meeting, at a business event or during a conference. For these situations, a bit of advance planning will reduce the pressure and increase the likelihood of making a valuable contribution....
