My twelve year old son, Alexander, just got braces on his teeth. In case you don’t remember or never had them, braces hurt the first few days. A lot. Alexander is a trooper, and knew that the pain in his mouth would eventually subside.But that first afternoon, he was extremely uncomfortable. Later that evening, around … Read more
Chess is not the easiest game to play. Chess also isn’t the easiest game to teach someone else how to play. I’ve spent the past two weeks trying to teach the fundamentals of chess to my nine year old daughter, Miranda. What’s particularly challenging is explaining the idea of long term thinking. Miranda gets how … Read more
On Saturday, I got to be a guinea pig in an experiment on leadership, coaching, and motivation.I didn’t plan for this. It just worked out that way.The laboratory? My local CrossFit gym. The experiment? A group workout, where were matched up to work in teams of two. Saturday’s workout was a 5000 meter row on … Read more
The Thursday before Halloween, an unusual October storm hit our town in Western Massachusetts. We got about 3 inches of snow. When a storm like this comes through, it’s pretty clear that Mother Nature has a reason that snow generally comes after the leaves fall off of the trees. The weight of the snow bends, … Read more
It was supposed to go like any other conference call.I dialed in to meet with Meg, Pam, Roger, and Shari – four executives from a biotech organization. On the back end of a merger, the company had brought me in to help the two legacy marketing departments collaborate more effectively. Our phone meeting was a … Read more
Um, hold on a second, just let me close the door to my office. The conversation was about to get a bit more interesting.I was on the phone with the Jan, the head of Human Resources of a privately held consumer products company. The company had notched 102 straight years of profit- until this last year. … Read more
Last Wednesday was a sunny, crisp, beautiful Fall New England morning. That’s when it all went terribly wrong.It was already 8:10 am, and I was hurrying to get Miranda, my nine-year old daughter to school on time.Her school’s about a mile from home, and thus far this school year, we’ve been riding our bicycles to … Read more
Morons should kill themselves.When you read that, what’s your reaction? What do you think? How do you feel? What judgments do you make? That first sentence was tweeted, as was this one: Cyclist almost killed my dog this morning. He fell off and yelled at me. I hope he broke his f—ing arm. But wait, there’s … Read more
Innovation: Creating value by doing something better by doing it a new or different way. That “something better” could be many things: A new product A refined process An improved way to collaborate Innovation doesn’t have to mean a radical change -incremental tweaks are innovative, too. Given this broad definition of innovation, everyone can be innovative. … Read more
In the course of my consulting engagements, I work with hundreds of mid-level and senior leaders a month. Lately, I’ve asked asked many of them the same question: When you make an offer to be of support to a group of entry-level or junior-level employees, how many of them actually take you up on your offer … Read more
