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The Working Supervisor's Support Kit is a collection of information and tools to help working supervisors do a better job. It's based on what Wally's learned in over twenty years of supervisory skills training.

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The business blogs are roaring along this week, making the task of picking five posts for your reading pleasure even more difficult than usual. I'm pointing you to posts about how to use failure, hanging on to some of your Boomers, innovation and why we often get it wrong, politics in the workplace, and the test of a team.

From Brain Based Business: Reduce Risk of Failure - Draw More from Mistakes
"If you take risks … you’ve likely seen your share of mistakes too. Whenever you stand on the front lines and do what is different … you can bet that errors slip into the mix as sure as you get wet when caught in a downpour. So how do risk-takers cope? After 30 years of risk taking to help people draw on more brainpower at work … I have learned ten tips to reduce curve balls and ratchet up a few more home runs."

Wally's Comment: My parents each had an aphorism that's appropriate here. My father's was: "Life is the art of new and better mistakes." My mother's motto was: "What good can we make of this?"

From Business Week: Holding on to retirement-age employees
"Retirement is a delicate subject in most companies. On the one hand, employers may be glad to bid adieu to higher-priced talent whose exit clears the way for younger hotshots to move up. But there are always those impending retirees who would be painful to lose. They have experience and skills that are in demand or difficult to replicate. People trust them. They’re in their prime. One quarter of all the respondents to Ernst & Young’s 2007 Aging US Workforce Survey say that they are trying to determine how to adjust benefits for that latter group to persuade them to stay on a while. They’re less interested in broad-brush changes than a more surgical approach aimed at key employees. That can mean anything from tailoring stock options to adding in more health benefits.

Wally's Comment: As with so many articles about hanging on to talent, this one concentrates on executives. Here's an idea. Start thinking about your mid-level managers, craft supervisors and knowledge workers whose knowledge and relationships contribute to your bottom line.

From Fast Company: Innovation: Old Often Becomes New
"Originality is overrated. Engineers are often told in engineering schools that a good design typically consists of 45% duplication, 45% slight modification and 10% originality. Those who follow this principle benefit from the experience of their predecessors. Their designs tend to work. That is the way it should be. "

Wally's Comment: There two mistakes we make about innovation. Mistake one is to assume that creativity (coming up with good ideas) is the same as innovation (putting ideas into processes and objects that make things better). Mistake two is to assume that all innovations are giant, world-changing innovations.

Most change is incremental. James Bryan Quinn called it "logical incrementalism" decades ago in his book Strategies for Change and the Japanese have enshrined it with its own word: kaizen

From the HR Capitalist: Why Bashing Hillary or Huckabee is Bad Business for Managers....
"To be sure, conversations about religion, politics, race and other sensitive topics are going to happen in the workplace. The workplace imitates life, so that's just the way it is. Employees talking to other employees about politics? Cool, as long as you know that it's a polarizing topic. The catch comes when those with authority over others begin to flex their opinion muscle as part of their daily banter."

Wally's Comment: Another helpful, real-life-based post from Kris Dunn.

From Leadership in Action: Teamwork: Not Just Working With Each Other, but Working Together
"Early in my career, I was an Assistant Account Manager in the world of advertising. I worked for a firm that targeted the technology industry and found great success. The three founding partners were always very cordial and continually tried to build a creative work environment, at least it seemed that way to me."

Wally's Comment: Just like for web sites, the test for teams isn't how they look, it's how they work.

Wally's Working Supervisor's Support Kit is a collection of information and tools to help working supervisors do a better job. It's based on what Wally's learned in over twenty years of supervisory skills training. Click here to check it out.

Request your free copy of "Meeting the Challenges of the Boomer Brain Drain: An integrated approach."

Wally Bock has helped people learn to be great bosses for more than a quarter century. His latest book, Performance Talk: The One-on-One Part of Leadership, makes learning key leadership principles almost effortless by teaching through a story and providing lists of resources for further growth.

Click here to find out more about Wally's coaching services.

For weekly tips and resources pointers, check our Wally Bock's Three Star Leadership Letter.

Click here to find out more about having Wally speak to your company or convention.