I recently heard a US Army General deliver a compelling talk about the importance of getting fuel to the front line of battle. Fuel powers our jeeps. Fuels powers our helicopters. Without fuel on the front line, our military effectiveness grinds to a halt. We need to ensure the presence of fuel at the front […]
Tag: leadership
The Interstitial Defect
Have you ever had an experience that was so profound, it was difficult to put words to it? What about when you try to explain that experience to someone – and just when you think you got the words right, the light goes out of their eyes only to be replaced with confusion? This post […]
Attention Fatigue
Surely you’ve been there. You have a complex problem to solve. You’ve done the work. You’ve already tried a several solutions. None of them have moved the needle. You vow to think about it for a day. One day becomes forever. It isn’t that you didn’t care about the problem, but a bigger problem imposed […]
Why Bother with Communication? (Part 3)
Many years ago, I was sitting in a meeting with two colleagues. We were discussing something technical and the conversation got very heated and very loud. As I sat there and listened to both sides of the argument, I started laughing. First, it was just to myself, but as the argument bloomed, so did my […]
Ever Find Yourself in a Place Where NOTHING Makes Sense? (Part 2)
Quick. Multiple choice question: It’s not supposed to make sense. I don’t know what they are talking about. Maybe I am in the wrong place. Face it, sometimes, the information simply isn’t for you. That doesn’t make it bad, irrelevant, or wrong. Furthermore, it does not diminish your value. We are all cut from a […]
Be Honest with How Much You Know (especially when others don’t) – Part 1
Have you ever been in a meeting or seminar when the person talking simply makes no sense? That’s not to say the lecture is bad, the presentation might be completely engaging, but it just doesn’t seem to mean anything to you. It happens to me all the time. People are talking, usually speaking English, and […]
Attending Meetings Better
Meetings. Love them or hate them, they are a regular part of most of our careers, and as we have all experienced, some meetings are much better than others. We have all been in that meeting that goes on and on, meandering through all sorts of ideas without coming to any resolution, often creating more […]
SMART Goal Checkup
In Setting Goals (is hard), I set a personal goal to get one more customer for my business. And, per our guidelines, this was a SMART goal. It was specific. The customer had to be a new account worth $10,000 or more. It was measurable. It’s pretty easy to tell if we’ve added that one […]
Privilege and Responsibility
A lot has been written about entitlement in the last handful of years. Politically, we talk about all of the things we deserve and that the government should just provide. Professionally, we talk about how our companies owe us a raise or more benefits or how we should be making six figures straight out of […]
Educating or Inspiring?
I failed. I reacted, or rather, I responded. But I was far from proactive. As a leader, my job is to cast a vision. This vision must be compelling. It must be exciting. It must paint such a wonderful picture, that any notion of maintaining the status quo would be crazy. The future is the […]
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