An upcoming trip to fly-fish on a tributary on the Amazon caused me to buy some heavier equipment (i.e., rod, reel, fly line, and flies). The fish down there are river monsters. A trip to the park to try out said gear was humbling. My casting is pretty good, but with that heavy gear I […]
When you view life over the long arc of history, the picture is phenomenal. Death, disease, poverty, war, and other nasty things—when viewed with a 100-year lens—have declined and many things have flourished. If you don’t believe me, pick up Steven Pinker’s book, “Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress.” When I […]
A client recently said, “The one on ones our managers are doing are turning into counseling sessions! How much is too much?” Great question. As a guy who grew up with a single parent, a mother who was very much a “pull yourself up by your bootstraps!” type of gal, my natural inclinations are skewed […]
168 is an important and immutable number. It’s one that we all share, the number of hours in a week. No one gets more, no one gets less. (Unless it’s your last week on earth or you were born on a Tuesday.) Most of you can, in great measure, control part if not most of […]
My wife and I recently had a wonderful trip to Costa Rica. The driver who took us back to the airport to fly home was an articulate, well-informed, 50-year-old man. We started to talk about the economy, Costa Rican society, and the government, and he painted a bleak picture of decline that I was unaware […]
Recent news from Ukraine is that four top Russian generals were killed on the battlefield. The story goes on to identify this sad but unique fact because of the top-down leadership style that Russia still hews to. Only “the big guys” are smart enough to make the tough decisions so they must be on the […]
After returning from a recent trip, I called my wife from the airport to see if she wanted to get dinner. She’d already eaten and said the fridge was bare, so I decided to use my monthly “grease and salt” ration and stop at a drive-thru. I pulled into the burger joint drive-thru with three […]
A line I’ve heard many times in my career as an executive and executive coach is, “I can’t afford to fire/lose him/her.” Most often, the story is one of a single point of failure. The person they’d like to part ways with (or make a significant behavior change in) has one or more of the […]
The phrase “I serve at the pleasure of …” annoys me. It’s used most often in the political realm, such as, “I serve at the pleasure of the president” (most often uttered when someone is about to get fired). Any leader who asserts that “you serve at my pleasure” may be factually correct but is […]
Most of my recent conversations with clients and other CEOs have been dominated by discussions about labor shortages. (Supply chain is a close second.) I’ll bet that everyone reading this has been affected in small or perhaps large measure. Whether it is your favorite restaurant cutting hours, your home-remodel project stuck in purgatory or your […]