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Latest Blog Posts
Lessons From An Inferno
Many of us read with sadness about the deaths of 19 members of the elite Granite Mountain Hotshots firefighting team earlier this summer. Despite their best efforts and extensive expertise, they died when they were over-run by a wildfire that even overcame their...
Mandela: The Imperfect Nobility of a Great Leader
Like those last bittersweet days before you send a child off to college knowing that family life will never be the same again, the world is coming to terms with saying goodbye to Nelson Mandela. Whether it’s today or next week or next month, it appears we’re in the...
Eleven Innovation Buzzkills
Ask almost any executive what they want in their stocking for Christmas next year and they’ll say, “Innovation!” That’s why HBR and Fast Company and Inc. and every other business magazine trumpets the latest thinking about innovation. Ignore for a second the obvious...
The Simple Reason So Much Coaching Is A Waste Of Time
We all know that developing the talent in our organizations is a fundamental role of leaders. Yes, yes we know that we should be adding to the bench strength of our organization constantly since one key to long-term growth is having enough talented, switched-on people...
Can’t Find The Right People? Maybe Your Business Model Is Busted
You’re sitting around the conference room table with your fellow executive team members staring at a list of symptoms. Sales are flat or even falling. When you start to dig into root causes, you immediately notice that your company has promoted star salespeople to new...
Four Marks Of Lasting Genius
I recently wrote a eulogy to a remarkable black bear named Yellow Yellow. She was the unusually resourceful bear who beat virtually every bear canister in her efforts to mooch food from campers in the Adirondack mountains. She was so ingenious that bear canister...
Six Celebrated Character Flaws
You know this person: He’s the celebrated leader in his company and a darling of his industry. His organization is profiled as the next big thing. He’s written up as a leader bursting with innovation and purpose and dreams. Money and talent flow to this guy as...
Four Ways To Spot A Hidden Genius
I heard with some sadness about the death of a legend the other day. One of my hobbies is wilderness camping and this grand old lady was a fixture in the Adirondack mountains near where I grew up. She had rich brown hair, perfect teeth, and piercing dark eyes. And...
If You Do Your Best Work Under Pressure, You’re Not Alone
I was trying to pray this morning and all I could get in my mind was what happened last night. My wife and I were doing a 30-minute talk for a group of about 150 people. Being the super-organized person she is, my wife had outlined the talk for us noting where she...
The Lance Armstrong Manifesto
Now that the hubbub has died down a little from Lance Armstrong’s tightly scripted puke-fest on Oprah’s couch, I thought it might be interesting to step back and see how we got here. Yes, I watched the whole interview. And if I’m totally honest, I found myself saying...
It’s Time To Pick a Good Fight
“I don’t like my new boss," my friend said a while back over lunch. "We don’t fight enough.” You what?!?! I was taken a little off-guard by my friend’s comment. He’s a senior executive who had just started reporting to a new CEO. Hey, complaints about new bosses...
Why Fear Rocks
Fear works. There. I said it. I got all huffy in a recent post about not creating a fear-inducing environment. But the truth is that fear kicks ass. It gets people scurrying around. If you hate complacency, there’s nothing like a little panic to relax you. And yes, I...