Najera Consulting Group, Inc.

Tuesday’s Tool of The Trade – The Ladder of Inference

Posted by: Gabriel Najera In: The Najera Notion 0 comments Tags: Communication, Consulting Tools, Frame of Reference, Mental Models, Problem Solving

Another Post in Our Series of DIY Consulting Tools We Share Every Other Tuesday!

Everyone at one time or another has been in the situation where work team communication breaks down. Unfortunately in business a failure in communication usually causes a lot more harm than good.

A key cause of communication failure is how each of us interprets the information that has been presented to us.

Different parties interpret the same facts quite differently such that each may come to a different conclusion. Understanding the perspectives of your managers, team leaders, teammates, customers, and partners therefore is critical to reaching win-win situations and to achieving the business results you desire. Read more…

Can Your Job be Outsourced?

Posted by: Gabriel Najera In: The Najera Notion 2 comments Tags: Career, Career Planning, Coping, Frame of Reference, Leadership, Mental Models, Mindset, Professional Development

Now that the recession has come and gone, what have we learned? Something that corporate America has learned is this: they can pick-up the pace of outsourcing, the practice of contracting work to people or other companies outside the traditional organizational pyramid.

During the recession the economic slump became so pronounced that even outsourcing got scaled back. In addition, executives also reined in outsourcing on concern of government pressures against it. Read more…

Are You Ready for the Class of 2015?

Posted by: Gabriel Najera In: The Najera Notion 13 comments Tags: Communication, Frame of Reference, Mental Models, Mindset

On Wednesday April 29th I attended Schmoozefest 2015 for the first time. This is an annual professional networking event put on by our client The Chicago Latino Network. This year’s event was held at Moe’s Cantina and was MC’d by Zoraida Sambolin, a very popular and beautiful! (my emphasis) local news celebrity.

The crowd was made up mainly of 20, 30 and 40 somethings. I met a young lady who told me she was a senior in college and would be graduating next month. We started talking about the recent Chicago mayoral election and I realized that I kept repeating the same thing to her over and over again. For a minute I thought she couldn’t hear me because of the loud music. I quickly came to the conclusion that the reason I was repeating myself was that she didn’t fully understand what I was trying to tell her. In exasperation I finally said to her, “Listen, I hate to sound like a broken record but…” She looked at me with a puzzled look and said, “What’s a broken record?” Read more…

Don’t Just Talk About it, Be About it!

Posted by: Gabriela Garcia In: The Najera Notion 1 comment Tags: Goals, Mental Models, Vision

“The world needs dreamers and the world needs doers. But above all, the world needs dreamers who do.”

Sarah Ban Breathnach, Author, “Peace and Plenty”

A few years ago, on a lazy Sunday afternoon on the Upper West Side of New York, I found myself reminiscing with two old friends in a small crowded diner. Talking about times past, one friend recalled a moment in time, over a decade earlier, when I had just moved to Los Angeles. He reminded me of a comment I made sitting on the bare floor of my new rented studio apartment: “I feel so lost. I feel as though I’ve been placed in the middle of this huge forest, with no compass, no guidance and no way of knowing how to get out.” Read more…