Decision-making
Seeing Opportunities and Making Them Stick
A man and his dog returned home from a walk through the woods covered in cockleburs. The tiny burs had clung to the man’s pants and the dog’s fur, and it took a long while to disentangle them all. The man, Swiss engineer George de Mestral, was impressed by how easily the burs had latched…
Read MoreHow to Think Straight and Concentrate
We train our brain by the things we do. For example, experienced taxicab drivers have an abnormally large hippocampus, the portion of the brain responsible for navigation. Veteran violinists or keyboardists have an expanded motor cortex, the area of the brain associated with fine motor skills. Our brain is literally shaped by what we repeatedly…
Read MoreThe Not So Secret Path to Greatness
The young girl skipped onto the stage of the dilapidated, half-filled theater hall, her thin voice competing with the noise of an unruly audience. Midway through the first verse of her first song, a beer bottle smashed onto the floor just a yard or so in front of her. The child’s voice quaked momentarily, but…
Read MoreWhat is the right way to lay someone off?
At Leadercast a few years ago, I fielded a very timely question. During lunch, a young man asked, “How does a good leader handle layoffs? Especially when they need to lay off a good and valued employee?” Here’s what I believe: First, I don’t think a leader should ask others to make sacrifices until he’s…
Read MoreWhat does your daily agenda say about you?
How would you describe your life? Are you achieving what you desire? Are you accomplishing the things that are important to you? Do you consider yourself a success? How do your prospects look for the future? If I could come to your house and spend just one day with you, I would be able to…
Read MoreThe joy of not knowing…
Some people believe that great leaders have all the answers. Not true. Successful leaders don’t know everything. But they know people who do. If you ask me a question related to one of my organizations and I don’t know the answer, I know which person in the organization does. If you ask about my profession,…
Read MoreThe 3 R's of Decision-making
This past week on Twitter, I’ve been sharing some of my favorite quotes on priorities and time management. Important topics for every generation, priorities and time management seem to become more and more crucial every decade. Today, in the age of the smartphone and social media, even technology has joined the fight for our most…
Read MoreDon't quit during training
“I hated every minute of training, but I said, ‘Don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.’” ~Muhammad Ali Many people make decisions when things aren’t going well. They look for relief in the despair of the valley instead of waiting for the clarity that comes from being on…
Read MoreAre you driven by Emotion? Or Character?
Earlier this week on Facebook and Twitter, I shared this statement from Dick Biggs: The greatest gap in life is the one between knowing and doing. Life would certainly be easier – and success more simple – if all it took to achieve was to KNOW the right things and DECIDE to do them, right?…
Read MoreOn priorities: Which ball do you drop?
In a university commencement address several years ago, Brian Dyson, CEO of Coca-Cola Enterprises, spoke of the relationship of work to your other commitments: Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling five balls in the air. You name them – work, family, health, friends and spirit – and you’re keeping all of…
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