When my friend Elly taught in a middle school, he never hung out in the teacher’s room. He told me he couldn’t bear the badmouthing of students, the whining and the blaming. Of course, not all teachers are like this. In fact, most of them aren’t. And of course, trolling isn’t reserved to the teacher’s […]

Raising the bar Thats not the same as raising the average. With the advent of the high jump, the idiom raising the bar became well understood: If you cant jump over the bar that the current leader cleared, you dont win. But most of the innovations that change our culture dont actually increase the simple […]

  When Marvin Gaye joined Motown, he went with his strengths. He wanted to work only in the studio. He hated touring and was sure he lacked the charisma and other gifts that made some musicians great onstage. This didnt really fit the labels strengths, and he struggled to find his footing. In 1962, Berry […]

And how soon is never? Most organizations are fundamentally incapable of planning ten years out. When a company promises to be carbon neutral by 2030, theyre actually saying that they may never be. Thats because almost all the pressures on them are short-term pressures. And it doesnt help that few people expect to be in […]

is surprisingly easy. Weve done all this work and things havent gotten better, so, apparently, we should stop trying and go back to what we were doing. Weve done all this work and things are getting better, so that means that theres no need to keep trying and we can go back to what we […]

Someone said that to me the other day and it was heartbreaking. The number of tasks in our culture that require someone who was born with off-the-charts talent is small indeed. Just about everything else we need people to do is the result of effort, practice and care. Its true that variations of that work […]

The chief marketing officer at a big company has an impossible job. The typical duration of a CMO is 18 months because once the CEO realizes that hype for money cant solve their problems, they get restless. The problem lies in what people think marketing is. Marketing isnt paying for ads, changing the logo or […]

When innovation arrives, the logistics people have to scramble to keep up, because innovation always makes it hard to do things the way we used to. Over time, an innovative company thrives if it can get its logistics in order. Ship the right stuff to the right people on time and on budget. Once this […]

Time and focus and enery Sooner or later, theyre all finite. And the way we allocate our time and emotional energy determines what gets done. If we audited your day in six-minute increments, what would we find? By the clock, how did you actually spend the time you given to you (we each get the […]

It must be more than a coincidence that there are almost enough jobs for everyonea billion more jobs on Earth than there were a generation ago. Unemployment is debilitating and a real problem, but even high unemployment in many countries still means that most people have a job. Many times, its a job that didnt […]

This is a very different task than snake charming. The first is far more common, but it requires heavy equipment and is often dangerous On the other hand, if you have empathy and patience, its possible to learn to charm the snakes instead

When time gets short (for new parents or startup founders, for example) we naturally focus on getting efficient. We can remove extraneous details and distractions and magically get much faster at getting tasks done. But being efficient is not the same as being productive. Productive is the skill of getting the right things done, so […]

There is the kindness of please and thank you. And the kindness of I was wrong, I’m sorry. The small kindnesses that smooth our interactions and help other people feel as though you’re aware of them. These don’t cost us much, in fact, in most settings, engaging with kindness is an essential part of connection, […]

For many people, work consists of a series of urgencies. Set them up and knock them down. Empty the in-box, answer the boss, make the deadline. Over the next few weeks, there may be fewer urgencies than usual. Thats the nature of coming back from a break. What if we used the time to move […]

  Must-Have Skills For An E commerce Leader E commerce has come a very long way in a relatively short period of time. What began as a pioneering role in the nascent world of online commerce is now a position that sits at the table with the senior most strategic decision makers of an organization, […]

    HELPFUL LINKS & INFORMATION (This section will be continually growing & evolving) A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE ———————————————————————————————————— LEADING DURING A CRISIS 5 (Practical) Cs for Leading in a Crisis/Downturn by Verne Harnish > 5 (Practical) Cs for Leading in a Crisis/Downturn by Verne Harnish (EN ESPANOL / IN SPANISH)> Facing a Company Crisis? Follow […]

Interesting business lesson learned on a bicycle: it’s very difficult to improve your performance on the downhills. I used to dread the uphill parts of my ride. On a recumbent bike, they’re particularly difficult. So I’d slog through, barely surviving, looking forward to the superspeedy downhill parts. Unfortunately, I had a serious accident a few […]

If you buy my product but dont read the instructions, thats not your fault, its mine. If you read a blog post and misinterpret what I said, thats my choice, not your error. If you attend my presentation and youre bored, thats my failure. If you are a student in my class and you dont […]

If your business needs money, it seems as though you have two choices: Get a loan from a bank Raise equity from an investor, giving up part of your company in exchange Banks are everywhere, so the idea that they can loan us money seems obvious. And venture capitalists and the companies they fund are […]

If you want to know if a ship is going to sink, watch what the richest passengers do. iTunes and file sharing killed Tower Records. The key symptom: the best customers switched. Of course people who were buying 200 records a year would switch. They had the most incentive. The alternatives were cheaper and faster […]

Your job might be a series of tasks. Tasks are work where money is traded for time and effort. You put in a fixed amount of time, expending effort along the way, and you get paid. In the end, tasks are completed and its up to the boss to weave those tasks together into something […]

The only way to get initiative is to take it. Its never given. And some people hesitate to take it, perhaps because theyre worried that well somehow run out. Were not going to run out. Its a self-renewing resource. From an early age, most of us were taught to avoid it. Do your homework. Take […]

Not just travel agents, but all agents. Information scarcity is disappearing. Forty years ago, passengers didnt know which airline flew where and when. And forty years ago, airlines had no easy way to find out who wanted to fly somewhere. Today, of course, theres no shortage of information or ability to connect. So paying 10% […]

Some days a motivational quote can provide a quick pick-me-up for employees and even management. They can be a breath of fresh air when it comes to a drab afternoon. These are also a great way to jazz up a newsletter or a memo or even to simply print and attach to a bulletin board. […]

One simple way to improve your productivity is to keep an agenda, whether by hand or via a day by day to-do list app. It may not sound like brilliant advice, but this small change can have effect that cannot be overstated. This guide indicates some reasons you should consider keeping to-do lists. Today we […]

Guts, because it might not work. And generosity, because guts without seeking to make things better is merely hustle. The innovator shows up with something she knows might not work (pause for a second, and contrast that with everyone else, who has been trained to show up with a proven, verified, approved, deniable answer that […]

It seems as though the opposite of careless ought to be careful. That the best way to avoid avoidable errors is to try harder, to put more care into the work. This means that if surgeons were more careful, there would be fewer errors. And that so many of the mistakes that mess things up […]

The work is difficult. Overcoming obstacles, facing rejection, exploring the unknown – many of us need a narrative to fuel our forward motion, something to keep us insisting on the next cycle, on better results, on doing work that matters even more. The fuel you choose, though, determines how you will spend your days. You […]