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Latest Blog Posts
Three Joys Of Generosity
I know a consultant who made a huge mistake by being normal. He was working with a rapidly growing client. This organization was still in the early stages of penetrating its target market and was eager to go from an unknown to a household name as quickly as possible....
Choose Your Words, Choose Your Future
The funny thing about the whole fiscal cliff scenario is that we’re surprised about how paralyzed our system is. It’s like our whole country is shaking its head as we watch a car driven by Barack Obama and John Boehner careen toward the cliff with Harry Reid and Ben...
Tragedy or Turning Point?
I usually write about the intersection of strategy, leadership, and customer relationships. Not today. I usually try to provide a straight-shooting, snappy perspective on situations we all face when we go to work each day. I go for tongue-in-cheek on regular...
Three Questions To Ask If You Hate Cliffs
I wasn’t in the room when Newsweek’s leaders decided to end its 80-year print run and go all-digital. But Tina Brown’s note to readers in a recent issue of the magazine reads like a textbook case of what happens when you get Altitude. The jury is still out on whether...
What’s Your “Above All Else?”
A while ago, I had the opportunity to sit down with a leader who had just finished a long, distinguished run as the CEO of a high-growth professional services firm. She joined not long after the firm started. The early days were hairy. Several times, she and the...
If… 2012
I first posted this during Thanksgiving week two years ago. It immediately became the most read post I've ever written. So posting an updated version has become an annual tradition... All the best this Thanksgiving! If you slept in a warm bed last night... give...
Three Ways to Make Leaders Greedy For New Growth Projects
Trust me, you've been here: You're in your planning session. You've been locked in a room for a solid day or more. This hostage crisis has gotten your juices flowing. You stare at a list of promising growth projects. Then it happens. You have a list of promising...
Six Ways To Effectively Lead a Planning Session
Ever seen leaders play one of these roles at a planning meeting? The Lecturer - In meeting 1, you’re locked in a planning session and the leader is controlling everything. She says too much and says it too strongly. The rest of the leadership team starts to wonder...
Four Rules For Pushing the Envelope
Unless you’re a sailboat racing nut, you may have missed the story about the dramatic capsizing of Team Oracle’s 72-foot catamaran in San Francisco Bay. Sailboat racing isn’t my thing, but my friend and strategic facilitation colleague, Linda Lindquist-Bishop - a...
4 Insights I Gleaned From Getting Slammed On Huffington Post
A few weeks ago, I re-posted a piece on Huffington Post that essentially said, “Tell your boss the truth.” Here’s what readers said: “Yet another ‘helpful’ article written by someone who obviously does NOT toil in the trenches.” “Please... this is just nonsense.” And...
Three Reasons Unrealistic Goals Create a Culture of Failure
Matt the CEO loves to set super-ambitious goals. If a normal person would look at the numbers and suggest that his organization should grow 10%, you can bet your airline upgrade that he’ll target 20%. Ask him why he does this and he has a simple, snappy answer: If we...
Demanding vs. Demeaning
I was shocked when I heard that my friend, John (do you really need me to say that this is not his real name!?!?), recently left what everyone else in his field would call a dream job. As a master athletic coach, he held a key spot in player development for a...