The Stranded Starfish has been a passion of mine since December, 2009. The following is an index of past columns, each with a link to the full article.
| Title | Description |
| Shared Vocabulary | Does your team have simple shared words that represent otherwise complicated concepts? |
| Martyrdom is Overrated | Do you know the heart rate of your team? |
| Ego Ergo Sum | Can you truly be anonymous in your giving? |
| You don’t say? | Do you understand the connotation of some your words you use with your team? |
| Flag, Forge, Follow-up | Is there a good way to capture the knowledge I gain from my reading? |
| Blue Moon… | Are you asking enough questions? |
| I Love a Good Challenge | Is there a right way to challenge your boss? |
| Hollow Statements | Are you giving your team words that mean nothing do to inaction? |
| What a Coincidence | Do you create your own coincidences? |
| Secret (change) Agent Man | Do you know if you are biting off more than you can chew in a new job or is your ego having its way with you? |
| Mind the Gap | Is there really such a thing as “too many notes” in our lives? |
| The Red Honda Theory | Why do I all of a sudden notice something a lot more now than yesterday? |
| Crossing the Line | Why do I need to understand the “bitch line” to maximize my teams’ performance? |
| It’s like going to Wisconsin | What if you are the reason a culture doesn’t improve? |
| A Wonderfully Simple Principle | How do I know if I am in the right job? |
| Iguanas, Leopards and Humans – Part I | How important are first impressions, really? |
| One in a Million? | Was that recent coincidence really that surprising? |
| The First Laugh is the Deepest | Can you explain why something is funny? |
| Mmmmm, Tacos | Do you see others doing the same thing over and over again yet nothing changes – even the results? |
| Don’t Drop the Baby | What separates the masters from the rest of the pack? |
| Hidden Mickeys | Did you ever think deeply about what went into that small favor that someone did for you? |
| Your Inner Schizophrenic | Creative genius or mental illness? |
| Your Mother Wears Combat Boots | How did being the calm one in the argument work out for you? |
| The Invisible Hand of Motivation | Do you really know what is important to each of your employees? |
| The Audacity of a Magnolia | What if your greatest fear was not failure but success? |
| The Week of Living Consciously | Can you give 5 days to living intentionally? |
| Day 1 – Monday: Story Topping | Can’t wait for someone else to finish their boring story so that you can tell yours? |
| Day 2 – Tuesday: Make the Call | What does your phone log say about you and your relationships? |
| Day 3 – Wednesday: Inopportune Opportunity | Did you plan for that coincidence? |
| Day 4 – Thursday: All You Do Is Crab | What if you treated others better than they deserved? |
| Day 5 – Friday: Mentor, My Mentor | Are you up for a mentor or protoge? |
| Want a Job? | What’s the most important thing to know in an interview? |
| Stuck in the Middle With You | Are you under-utilizing the customers that hate your company the most? |
| What a Waste of Time | Where does efficiency lie in a great relationship? |
| I Was an Accident | Is how you see your past keeping you from being your future? |
| Kill Them With a Performance Review | Do you hate your company’s performance review as much as I do? |
| Stuck in the Middle of the Spin Cycle? | What if you weren’t the center of your own universe? |
| A New Skin | The Stranded Starfish gets a new look. |
| What Do You Do For a Living? | How do you answer the question, “What do you do for a living?” |
| The Fear of Greatness | Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond imagination. |
| Smarter Than The Average Bear | Are you rewarding too many of your team members? |
| The Hallmark Effect | Why do we have a special day to appreciate employees? |
| Just an Average Joe | Sometimes you can make a bigger impact on an organization by not being a part of the organization. |
| Merry Christmas, Steve Gray | Can a simple failure to do a favor in the past forever impact the way you react to an opportunity in the future? |
| For Sufficiently Large Values of 1 | Do you have an employee that makes everyone around them better? |
| It’s Not You, It’s Me – or not | What if the performance failure of one of your employees is really your fault? |
| No Question, It’s Personal | Why do we need enemies to rally our troops? |
| In Memory of a Dear Friend | How is it possible that a God who loves us very much would allow someone to take their life at a point that they were starting to reconnect? |
| Was It Over When the Germans Bombed Pearl Harbor? | Do you know your quitting point before you even begin the battle? |
| The Curse of Knowledge | Is your intelligence keeping you from the answer? |
| They Won’t Budge | What do you do when your employees are too satisfied with where they are to take the next big step? |
| Give Me Time To Recognize Your Genius | Ever wonder why it took so long for others to get on board with your ideas? |
| Go Immerse Yourself | How can you make the world flatter? |
| The Challenge of Roosters and Penguins | Is it possible to run with someone else’s idea even though you don’t agree? |
| Three is a Magic Number | Is there something better about three people than there is with just two or four? |
| I Didn’t Know I Knew That | When you are asked a critical question, would you sooner trust your genious friend or your first gut instinct? |
| A Bushel of Corn and a Few Otter Skins | Would you treat your team differently if they were all volunteers? |
| The Illusion of Creative Freedom | What if creativitywas about limitations and not about freedom? |
| For the Love of Kindle | Kindle, iPad or book??? |
| Am I Responsible For This Mess? | Is asking who is at fault a question about history or the future? |
| I’m Not Bad – I’m Just Drawn That Way | Why there is far more bad behavior from the execs than in the trenches? |
| The 5 Most Dangerous Questions | Has your spouse ever asked you one of these five dangerous questions? |
| What Sticks? | Do you have one of those incidents that everyone seems to remember that you would like them to forget? |
| Intention Deficit Disorder | Ever wrongly project someone’s intentions to describe their actions? |
| Size Does(n’t) Matter | Are you judging your success by your number of reports? |
| All You Need is… Data | Is big data keeping you from finding answer? |
| Reflections of… | All of my columns are the result of someone else’s light.This is a tribute to them. |
| Have Yourself a Very Tacky Christmas | Ever change your mind about a person’s bad actions when you heard why they did it? |
| I Am Batman | Can you make yourself happy just by what you wear? |
| Hope is More Than a Strategy | Ever heard the quote “Hope is not a strategy?” |
| Oh To Leverage Synergies | Why do we even write vision and mission statements anymore? |
| And Now, the Rest of the Story | Do you have enough trust in your team to let them in on the inside story? |
| Foggy Mountain Breakdown | Why does being a leader look so easy when you are second in command? |
| Heartbreak Hotel | Come the day when I decide to leave my job, will anyone be heartbroken? |
| Bliss Be Damned | How can we be comfortable in our ignorance and yet use it to help us grow? |
| The Best Day of His Life (so far) | How can I make someone else’s day special? |
| Ooh, That Smell | What if you had a special place you could go to lift your spirits at work as everyhing else goes to pot? |
| Dear GI | Do you have what it takes to make the sacrifices a soldier does? |
| Dear Jim | What if you got a chance to write the resignation letter you always wanted to write? |
| Half a Minute Man | Is there value in intrigue? |
| A Nice Game of Chess | What do you do if win/win is not possible? |
| Push Me Pull You | What single measure can help you understand if you are successful in your job? |
| I’m a Big Fat Boogerhead | What ever happened to the moderates? |
| Peace Be With You, Don Hall | How do you deal with the loss of a friend that was your nemesis? |
| Damn Words | How is it possible that today can matter when stacked up against all of the incredible successes of your past? |
| The Little Person Perspective | Can you better solve a tough problem by being less of a person? |
| You Gotta Keep ’em Separated | Why do I need to shut-up if I am the one at the board? |
| I Am the Sandman | Is it possible to gain more in another’s eyes by becoming less? |
| The Story In Our Eyes | What if our age were written in a storybook and you couldn’t find yourself in it? |
| I Double Dog Dare You | What if you knew the magic to convincing me of your point? |
| A Piranha in Your Tank | Do you have someone who wants to steal food from the mouths of your children? |
| Phoning It In | Is it possible to have a conference call that doesn’t waste everyone’s time? |
| “Work From Home” | How can you determine if you should have a work from home policy or not? |
| Let Me Count The Ways | Why should I be suspicious of leadership books and articles that have numbers in their title? |
| Veni Vidi Vici Vito | What do you do with the ultra-competitive members of your team? |
| Unnatural Leadership | What is your definition of a leader? |
| I Knew That | What if wisdom isn’t measured by what we know but what we seek? |
| eMail or eJail | Why isn’t anyone reading my emails? |
| I’m Where?!? | Why don’t people understand what I am talking about? I’ve given them all of the details they need. |
| More is More | Is your “more: getting in the way of your “better”? |
| Squirrel! | What if the secret you are waiting for is the one you already know? |
| A Geekful Thanksgiving | What if we had an undo key for life? |
| Burn Bright, My Friend | Why do we notice our shortcomings in others’ successes? |
| Because I Said So | Why do we have a problem with why? |
| The Insider | Do you over-rely on the person with the person that seems to have the pulse of the team? |
| The Trouble With SMEs | Is it possible that knowing too much may make you less likely to get a promotion? |
| Two Simple Things | What if you could improve every single relationship you had with two easy steps? |
| I Landed Where? | What if we really knew the truth about our heroes? |
| Creating Heroes | What if you got to create more heroes in your life? |
| The Stranded Whale | What would you do if they were not starfish on the beach but rather whales? |
| The Kids’ Table | What if what we kept longing for what we had or dreaming of what we want? |
| Go Surround Yourself With Yourself | What if you turned out to be your single biggest influence? |
| It’s the Time of the Season | Why does time seem to pass so quickly as we get older? |
| I Resolve to Not Resolve | Why do most New Year’s resolutions fail and how can you improve the odds? |
| Selah | What if we truly did pause and think about that? |
| Nice Tool | What drives a man to buy an expensive tool when he lacks any real skill? |
| …and Thanks for All the Fish | What if we aren’t all that? |
| My Biggest Fan | What if you really were a fan of someone you know? |
| The Dream Crusher | What if you only did the minimum necessary? |
| Knot Today | What if you had a way to untangle your ball of anxiety? |
| Quick, Give Me Three… | What if you always had three questions at the ready? |
| Mathematician or Jerk | What if we always assumed positive intent? |
| How Matters | What if ‘how’ mattered more than what? |
| Your Tactics Are All Backfiring | What if our attempt to convince others actually makes things worse? |
| Who Are You? (who who, who who) | What if your mental expecatations and givens turned out to be completely wrong? |
| Breathe In, Breathe Out | How is the creation process just like breathing? |
| Head Full of Doubt | What if you purposefully entered the room stupid? |
| Fail Fast Should Fail Faster | Why are so many companies adoptin failing fast when they aren’t equipped to learn? |
| For the Love of Constraints | Instead of thinking outside of the box, what if we made the box smaller? |
| Let’s Peel That Onion Back | What if buzzwords were actually a good tool to use? |
| How About McDonalds? | What if we weren’t afraid to improvise, even recommending a bad idea on purpose? |
