Height & Light Blog
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Are we switching them on or off?
Last week, I found myself on a hotel's airport shuttle at 5:30 AM. Yes, you feel my pain but I expect no sympathy since you've been there too. The bus was loaded with airline crew members on their way out to another day in the less-friendly skies. Perhaps to set the...
Enlarging Your Box – The Two Sheet Method
So you want to enlarge your box. Most of us do. Small boxes make for cramped quarters. And resigning yourself to a smaller box than necessary might just lead to a few regrets at the end of your career. I'm not talking about the fact that your earnings will be...
How Big Is Your Box?
A while back, I heard a talk by a person who had been a personal adviser to one of our country's presidents. He talked about going to the Oval Office - commonly referred to as the most powerful office in the world - and being struck by how limited a president's power...
Hacking, Innovation, and the Noonday Blog
A while back, I was talking with my new friend and innovation expert Gunnar Branson. He said something provocative: Innovation is a criminal act. His point was that innovation almost always involves the destruction of the status quo. Inevitably, it tends to be a...
Dirty Word # 32 – Mistakes (and why we should love them)
I have a confession. I hate making mistakes. I try to avoid them. And I'd guess I'm not alone. But I'm also wrong. Mistakes aren't always bad. And in fact, they can be quite good. I know this intellectually. I know that we don't learn without failure. I know that...
“Dude, the helicopter’s not happening…”
Here's a core principle we use when helping leadership teams plan their futures: Perspective precedes planning. In other words, know where you are before you plan where you're going. The principle's corollary: Discover the truth or it will bite you in the behind. A...
A Coach in Action
You might think it's hard to be a coach instead of a referee or judge. (Hint: it is.) You might think you can't possibly be a coach because you don't watch your team members "play their game" every day. (Hint: you can!) Here's a story I heard recently from a really...
Judge, Referee, or Coach?
I've noticed something when I'm working with leadership teams who are building and implementing plans for the future: Little is more vexing to the team leader (or members of the team for that matter) than the squabbling and political in-fighting that often plagues...
Dirty Word #31 – Normal
Do you want to be disappointed? If not, stop reading now. For the two of you who continued, a word of background: I've been sitting on a draft of this post for six months. An article in yesterday's Wall Street Journal made me decide to actually post it today....
Is Ownership Scaleable?
My friend and personal marketing guru Jeff said something provocative over lunch to me the other day. Size kills brands. If you get too big, the brand starts to get diluted and after a while just loses its punch altogether. It's an intriguing and, at first,...
Paradise Principle – Ownership
So you want to create a customer paradise that woos prisoners away from their familiar cells? Pay close attention to what my friend Wally said about how they do that at Brickman, a leading commercial landscape business. We promote ownership of customer loyalty at all...
Rules for Running Paradise
The three of you who read my last post (thanks, Mom, for your support) might remember that I talked about the difference between companies who lock up their customers and those who make customers want to stick around even though they could bail. One's like...