Traditions, Culture, and Life Lessons from Dr. Seuss

What? It’s the last month of the year already! What happened to 2011? When I was a kid I’d snicker when I heard adults talk about how fast time goes by. I couldn’t wait until I was taller, could drive a car, get a job, get out on my own…Time dragged at a frustrating crawl.

Now I understand. Life accumulates and time flies by. The prolific and profound children’s writer, Theodor Seuss Geisel — more popularly known as Dr. Seuss — once asked, “How did it get so late so soon? It’s night before its afternoon. December is here before its June. My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?”

As a kid I was mesmerized by his books, like Green Eggs and Ham, The Cat in the Hat and Hop on Pop. Dr. Seuss had a lot to do with me developing an early and lifelong love of reading and how words shape our imagination and create our reality. I now appreciate the wisdom of what he wrote in I Can Read with My Eyes Shut! “The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.”

December means the Holiday Season for many of us. Cultural traditions are at the root of our Holiday celebrations. Whether these are the broader society cultures or those of our own families, the Holiday Season is often a series of layers of “the way we do things around here.”

Many of my November blog posts have focused on organizational culture. Musing about the moral points in his writing, Dr. Seuss once observed, “sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.” The CLEMMER Group’s ongoing quest is drilling through the complexities of organizational culture to the simple leadership answers at the core of peak performance.

In, Oh, the Places You’ll Go, his last book published just before he died, Dr. Seuss left us this sage advice, “So be sure when you step. Step with care and great tact. And remember that Life’s a great balancing act. You’re off to great places! Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting. So …. get on your way.”

Archived Webinar on The CLEMMER Group’s Practical Leadership and Culture Development Services Now Available

As a follow-up to my November 4 Leading a Peak Performance Culture webcast I went through our toolkit of leadership and culture development resources and materials. I also sifted through the many variations of highly customized training and consulting approaches we’ve taken with many Clients. This was to pull together an interactive webinar to overview The CLEMMER Group’s practical leadership and culture development services. I gave a 30 minute presentation followed by questions from participants.

I built the overview around the five Key Implementation Steps outlined in the Leading a Peak Performance Culture webcast:

1. Assess current systems, practices, culture, and readiness for change.
2. Executive Retreat:
   • Review/assess, learn, envision, and prioritize leadership behaviors, and systems/processes.
   • (Re)set Strategic Imperatives, steering/project teams, and implementation framework.
3. Realign/integrate/prune current projects, processes, systems, and development initiatives.
4. Plan implementation strategies and timelines.
5. Monitor, follow up, and adjust implementation plans.

This follow-up session was directed at senior executives and support professionals such as Health and Safety, Human Resources, Training and Development, Lean, Organization Development, Quality, Customer Service, and related support professionals who are responsible for directly leading or guiding culture change efforts in their organization.

For over 30 years, Jim Clemmer’s practical leadership approaches have been inspiring action and achieving results. He has delivered thousands of keynote presentations, workshops, and management team retreats to hundreds of organizations around the globe moving his audiences from inspiration to application. He’s listed in the World’s Top 30 Most Influential Leadership Gurus based on research with 22,000 global business people, consultants, academics and MBAs. His website is www.JimClemmer.com