Bad things happen. Bad things have always happened. So have good things. Bad things have always gotten more notice and attention than good things. This is true in business, personal or political life. In today’s always-on, ever-connected world, the bad things are swiftly and broadly distributed and repeated (retweeted?) and amplified by the media to [...]
Anyone can have thoughts and come up with ideas. They are both free and plentiful. How do I know? How many notebooks, file folders, WORD documents, Evernote folders, and OneNote files are crammed with ideas, “good” ideas? And what are these ideas doing? They are sitting in digital or analog files. Just sitting, that’s all. [...]
Rice University Football Stadium, September 12, 1962 - President John F. Kennedy put the United States and the rest of the world on notice. The US was going to put a man on the moon and bring him home safely by the end of the decade. He went on to say why he had committed [...]
The best leaders have withstood direct contact with life's realities. “A cynical habit of thought and speech, a readiness to criticize work which the critic himself never tries to perform, an intellectual aloofness which will not accept contact with life's realities—all these are marks, not ... of superiority but of weakness.”
January 1 is a marker for new beginnings, an opportunity for a reset, or a clean palette upon which to write or draw the next lines of our future.
In a client meeting I inquired about a mutual acquaintance I had not seen in a long time. My client said, “He plateaued early.” I discovered our mutual friend was tracking in new orbits now; new friends and acquaintances, new hangouts, new everything. Long term relationships, plans, and priorities – and all that goes with [...]
“I recently had the opportunity, responsibility and privilege of apologizing to a colleague.” “You mean you HAD to apologize to someone, right?” “Well, I didn’t HAVE to, I chose to take advantage of the opportunity to clear things up. It was my responsibility in that I contributed to the misunderstanding at least 50%. It was [...]
I was recently in the home of friends who have a LARGE family. How large? Large enough to field almost any sports team from their ranks; large enough to be lovingly referred to as “the swarm”; large enough to make me – the youngest of two children – take notice of all the “activity”. Yet, [...]
This Is Your Life was an American reality documentary series broadcast on NBC radio, and then television, from 1948 to 1961. In the program, the host would surprise guests and then take them through a retrospective of their lives in front of an audience, including appearances by colleagues, friends, and family. The show had its [...]
Dr. Louis Binstock once said, “Too often the shortcut, the line of least resistance, is responsible for evanescent and unsatisfactory success.” Allow me to translate: “A shortcut is the longest distance between two points.” We're all guilty of taking shortcuts now and again, whether it’s not signaling to change lanes or using a chair instead [...]
