Once upon a time, a middle-aged man lost 60 pounds over a ten-month period. Five years later, he’d gained back every pound. He recently re-adopted the same system he lost the weight with the first time and dropped 10 pounds in the first three weeks. This man is confidently back on the way to shedding another 60 pounds; this time with new determination to keep them off for life.

If the company you work in is like most, you are frustrated with constant interruptions to your meetings. In days gone by, it was interruptions by secretaries (remember those?) and phones. But we live in a more insidious time now – electronic interruption and expectation. Because we all carry our smart phones with us, everyone expects that if they phone, email or text us, we will answer immediately. It’s a vicious circle. Because we have those devices – we feel we have to respond. If we do respond, we reinforce the expectation.

Over the last few months, about 80% of my clients have conducted their two-day Annual Planning Sessions. These powerful, jam-packed sessions always help a leadership team go deep - to celebrate the successes of the prior year, identify issues that don't always come out during more routine sessions and meetings, and to increase team health.

A few years ago, a friend of ours was given the task of diagnosing and fixing defects in the first version of a huge-brand consumer electronics product. The product’s initial launch had been an embarrassment. Worse, since it was first sold at Christmas and the defects didn’t become apparent for several months, there was very little time to get things fixed for the next holiday selling season.

A colleague of mine, Rich Lukesh, is an HR Professional who runs a business called Your Part Time HR Manager (www.yourparttimehrmanager.com) which is an On-Site and On-Call HR Services business. He writes an excellent blog with thoughtful suggestions for business owners and the HR Professionals who support them. One of his recent blog posts is called Stay Interviews: A Great Tool For Employee Retention – you can find it here.