“Expenditure of physical or mental effort especially when difficult or compulsory” — “Labor” definition, Merriam-Webster I’m not a fan of the term “labor” to describe some of the workers in the economy. It comes from the Latin word labor which means to toil or trouble. I never viewed the people that worked in the organizations […]
A friend recently sent me a great Far Side cartoon. A group of sheep is standing in a living room with cocktails, and a dog is at the doorway. One sheep says to another: “Henry! Our party’s total chaos! No one knows when to eat, where to stand, what to …. Oh, thank God! Here […]
I’m a big fan of Ken Burns documentaries. Years ago, I took time off at Christmas and watched the Civil War series with one of my kids. I’ve since seen Burns’ films on national parks and country music. Brilliant! I’d known of Burns’ 1994 baseball series but only recently watched it; it was as good […]
“No matter how great the talent or efforts, some things just take time. You can’t produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant!” —Warren Buffett I’m a fan of fast. I talk fast, eat fast and drive fast (says my wife). I like to complete undesirable projects quickly. Heck, we all have […]
I recently warned that your team may be fragmenting in the work-from-home environment. Since then, I’ve spoken with multiple CEOs who are concerned about this. Many of them have employees who’d rather work from home with sporadic office visits, and most of these CEOs will try to accommodate them. Given this, there are three concepts […]
A recent Wall Street Journal article (“How Higher Wages Can Increase Profits”) indicates that higher wages can not only reduce turnover and increase recruiting of talented people (no real surprise there) but also increase productivity in existing staff. So higher wages in this example (expense for the business) can achieve higher profit—pretty cool! Mysterious altruism […]
A new CEO asked me which important leadership skills he needed to succeed—the building blocks of success. I suspect he thought my answer would include things like industry knowledge, technical brilliance, negotiating prowess and capital structure analysis. Those are all interesting, but they aren’t success factors I’ve observed in my many years of coaching successful […]
“Gentlemen, this is a football.” —Vince Lombardi Although I can’t imagine his accomplished players — back in 1961 — were excited to hear this, I appreciate that when you’re seeking improvement, you start with the basics. It’s difficult to get onto a professional football team while lacking basic skills. But I’ve seen numerous senior managers, […]
Let’s talk about leadership rather than politics. There are very serious lessons for senior leaders to learn from our 45th president, particularly CEOs. From the perspective of many people, and yours may be different, Donald Trump seems more than willing to sacrifice democracy to assuage his ego. Of course, you say, I’d never do that. […]
Andrew got me pumped up today! He found me on the web and wanted advice about planning for business growth. He’s just getting started, growing rapidly, and I’m not the right resource, but I pointed him toward a couple of solutions to help. Our 30-minute phone call was probably more helpful for me, however, than […]