There is value is putting on a show for some audiences. Without the show, there is no connection. Without the show, there is no invitation to participation. Without the show, there is no permission to be vulnerable in ways that will create value and impact. Connection. Permission. Participation. Vulnerability. These Read more…
The resistance to needed changes in your organization is insidious, pernicious, persistent and determined. And if you are committed to making changes by grappling with the resistance, your approach to resistant people, resistant systems, and resistant attitudes should be as well.
Obligation is a funny thing. And not funny as “ha-ha” but funny as in “Isn’t this a modern irony?” The NFL owners voted almost unanimously this week, to move the Raiders franchise from Oakland to Las Vegas (a move fraught with its own implications in a professional sport full of Read more…
The hard questions aren’t ones that you just need to think about harder, to get to a binary answer. Binary answers. “What the other party wants to hear” answers. “Feel good” answers. Wrong answers. Right answers. The compelling issue is not that the questions are hard, or that they are Read more…
The courage to make the decision to act in the first place is the thing that is lacking the most. The courage to raise our hands, take responsibility, and to engage with accountability (rather than assigning blame or taking credit) is the work that your children will eventually be paid Read more…
Organizations, founders, managers, and employees who are self-aware do better than those who aren’t. This should come as no surprise, but in an economic, social, and even political climate where “knowing thyself” is as mysterious as “knowing thy customers,” it becomes incumbent upon an organization–and the people employed by it–to Read more…
The top six questions for leaders (or aspiring leaders) at work, are as follows: Who is responsible for the organizational culture at work? You, or your boss? Who is responsible for the conflict culture at work? You, or your boss? Who is responsible for the innovation at work? You, or Read more…
Three benefits accrue to you (or me, or anybody else) when you show up and guest lecture at a college or high school class. Prestige—I get to show up and talk with (or to) people who are there to hear knowledge and already mentally prepped with the idea that I’m Read more…
There’s a lot of negative social proofing going on right now. Some of it is transmitted through social media; some of it comes through more traditional means. Personal branding as a marketing term has fallen out of popularity, now replaced by the equally amorphous term “thought leader” which will soon Read more…
If you are a manager in an organization of any size, with any mission or scope of responsibility, it is your obligation to lead. Now, obligation is a loaded word, filled with the stresses of accountability, responsibility, and eating last in a world where everyone wants to eat first. Obligation Read more…