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Harry S. Truman said “Not all readers are leaders but all leaders are readers.“ Trump, of course, may be a notable exception. He’s already publicly stated he does not read, preferring instead to “watch a lot of TV.” Kanye West also claims to be “a proud non-reader of books.” Beyond that, the list of boastful […]

John Kenneth Galbraith, a Canadian-born economist, said “Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.” Confirmation bias is believing what you want to believe even though the hard evidence contradicts your conclusions. This hard-wired cognitive blind spot leads […]

2500 years ago, Confucius said “life is really simple but we insist on making it complicated.” Faced with too much information, too many choices and competing theories about how life works (or is supposed to work), we are predisposed to select the most intricate one on the presumption that life is complicated. It is not. […]

Most of the time we fail to pay attention to the life-altering implications of how we think. In contemplating our futures, we try to decide where best to invest our most precious asset – our time. Should we become better at what we uniquely do or should we learn something completely different? If we are […]

People often ask me how I get so much done.  My answer is that I don’t multitask. Multitasking is a fiction. We think we’re getting more done by trying to do several things at once but, in reality, our actual productivity declines by as much as 40%. Neurologically, it’s impossible to multitask. Rather, we switch-task […]

Steven Bornstein, a media executive, said 98% of his job consisted of managing egos and the other 2% was for thinking. That’s not my definition of how to lead others but it is worthy of reflection. The real question here could be which egos are we talking about – big or strong? Big egos are […]

Which are you? Ever thought about it? Before you smugly think you’re open minded, consider this: closed-minded people believe they are open minded. So how do you decide which camp you’re in? An open-minded person demonstrates an eagerness to learn and a willingness to be wrong. But being open minded doesn’t mean you have to […]

Procrastination is rooted largely in fear (of failure), self-doubt or laziness. We can’t eliminate it, we can only reduce it. The more something threatens our identity, the more we avoid doing it. Our identity is how we validate our self-worth, how we define ourselves to ourselves and how we convince ourselves to feel good about […]

When you discuss controversial or troubling issues with others, on whom do you primarily focus – on their concerns and their stories or on yours? Recently, I had a long conversation with an individual experiencing a potentially life-altering event in his business affairs. After running a successful enterprise for over 35 years, he wanted to […]

Some say life is way too short. Is it? Or do we just like complaining about not having ‘enough time’ to get everything done we want to accomplish? Whatever time you have is all the time you will have. It’s never how much time you have; it’s making the best use of the time you […]

To find passion in what you do you have to like what you do. That idea isn’t especially earth shattering, but discovering it can be difficult for some. Early on, I didn’t like school. It was boring, seemingly irrelevant, certainly uninspiring and simply not fun. I still don’t like school (for a lot of reasons) […]

This is a book about the rest of your life. I believe we only live once and that we’re not here to do what’s already been done. With no opportunity for rehearsal or reprise, a notion worthy of serious reflection, we are often ill-prepared for the richness of living. Many stride forward haunted by versions […]

You are here for a purpose. You just have to figure out what it is before you leave. And creating your own unique reason for being could be the greatest thing you will ever accomplish. Joseph Campbell described purpose as “the rapture of being alive.” Carl Jung said, “The sole purpose of human existence is […]

I once asked a group of CEOs whether they (individually) had an explicit moral compass that enabled them to lead their organizations in a principled way. Every hand in the room was spontaneously raised. I then asked if anyone could articulate just one value for the sake of illustration. Not a single hand was lifted. […]

The ability to think differently and effectively is, arguably, the one skill that determines our happiness, freedom, prosperity and ultimate destiny. While we take thinking for granted, it is an essential process of living so bridled with complexities and paradoxes that it keep us from seeing the true nature of ourselves. In an increasingly complex, […]

Most of what managers do to encourage high performance in organizations today likely produces the opposite of what they intend. Brain science provides powerful insights into the common suffering known as “the human condition.” In simple terms, this means people are fallible and imperfect. Since employees are people too, mangers need to be cognizant of […]

Almost every action a leader takes in business today requires expertise in negotiating.  That is likely why conventional wisdom tells us great leaders are good negotiators. Certainly, getting better at it means improving the organization’s bottom line, if not advancing your career objectives. That stated, what you can do to improve your winning percentage may […]

Twentieth century dogma posited that our brains are hardwired for life. But that myth has been dispelled with the advent of invasive modern diagnostic technologies such as Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Electroencephalography. We now know the brain can change its physical structure and neural processing well into our advanced years. Just over a decade ago, […]

Considerable attention is devoted in the business press to the topic of women and leadership.  Whether it’s Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In, Marissa Mayer’s turnaround of Yahoo or the first woman to run a global automaker, Mary Barra, females in the C-suite seem to generate an almost inexplicable controversy.   Women now lead such multinational behemoths as […]

Many aspiring executives resent the fact that they must engage in office politics to get ahead.  Some view it as beneath them to do so, insisting they “just want to do their job.” The fact, however, is that if you want to advance in organizational life, you have no choice but to learn how to play […]

Leadership has been studied in depth for almost a century.  Yet there exist no unequivocal or definitive prescriptions as to its essence. Plug the word into Google and, in a split second, you get 463 million responses. Warren Bennis, an acknowledged guru on the subject, has noted that there are more than 850 distinct definitions […]

Having a career as a CEO is a risky business.  Over the past decade, the rate of dismissals has increased by 300% and turnover now exceeds the normal attrition rate for all employees. Forced exits from the C-suite occur for a multitude of reasons ranging from poor cultural fit to misaligned skill sets. At least […]

Innovation consists of three essential components – invention, acceptance and execution.  An ever expanding literature, countless training programs and extensive media coverage focus primarily on getting and implementing needed new ideas rather than on the critical survive-or-die ingredient known as “agreement”. For, without acceptance and support, there is no innovation.  In 2007, the Institute of […]

Organizations may be the sum of their parts but someone has to be in charge.  Whether he or she is called CEO, President, Executive Director or something else, the leader is ultimately responsible for the success or failure of the enterprise. As such, choosing the right person for the job is likely the most important […]

More than 150 years ago,  in his classic treatise On the Origin of the Species, Charles Darwin wrote: “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” A century and a half later,  that natural law is being played out in boardrooms and […]

THE SCENARIO I aspire to a higher level of responsibility but all too often see others with less skill being promoted over me. I don’t want to come across as immodest, but how do I get the recognition and advancement I deserve? THE ADVICE In business today, if you can’t get excited about your accomplishments, […]

One of the key lessons learned from the 2008 meltdown and ensuing “Great Recession” is that the business models of most leaders were shaken to the core. And why not? The stock market fell 40% and the global economy lost 35 million jobs as 45% of its wealth evaporated. The Changing Landscape.  The 2010 IBM […]

Two inescapable realities of business life – that every successful organization has a qualified leader at the top and that no leader lasts forever – should be forcing corporate boards to ask if they have the bench strength to ensure effective leadership in the C-suite and thus ongoing competitive advantage. Seventy 70 per cent of companies […]

It has been my privilege over the past four decades,  as an adult educator, to have met people from all walks of life who attend my various training courses and residential leadership programs. Their common objective is that they aspire to greater things in their personal and professional lives. In some cases, they seek the […]

Perhaps the most difficult challenge for most leaders  is overcoming resistance to major change initiatives from within the organization. The key to understanding resistance is to realize that it is a predictable, natural and necessary emotional response – an inevitable part of learning to accept change. Resistance is not the threat; ignoring it is. It […]

Take this simple test:  Which of the following has the greater risk of causing death in North America today? Being eaten by a shark or being killed by falling airplane parts? Being poisoned or having tuberculosis? Having leukemia or having emphysema? From homicide or from suicide? From all accidents combined or from a stroke? While […]