Sheryl Sandberg’s new book, “Lean In,” starts a conversation about why women don’t “lean in” to leadership opportunities. Regardless of your views of the late Margaret Thatcher, she was definitely a woman who leaned in. Politics aside, she did so many things that her detractors … Read more
As the politicians both in Washington and here at home battle over the fate of entitlement programs, I started thinking about what the “entitlement culture” has done to innovation. In a word, it kills it. (see my previous blog on the critical importance of innovation) … Read more
The dreaded performance reviews – managers hate writing them and most employees hate getting them. So why do we do them? Because people need feedback and because we believe we must have a way to assess whether or not a person is “worth” a certain … Read more
Why are we so afraid of failure? Does it make us look bad? Will dire consequences happen if we fail? Do we really believe that “failure is not an option” – like the famous movie line from Apollo 13? In fact, failure was necessary in … Read more
A recent article in the New York Times, entitled, “No Division Required In This School Problem,” described how MIT doctoral student, Peng Shi, saw a possible solution to the problem of getting kids access to good schools that was fair to all parties. He was … Read more
A recent article in the WSJ entitled “Tracking Sensors Invade the Workplace,” caught my attention. First, the thrust of the article was all about tracking employees to boost productivity, an intrusive and not very employee friendly approach. The study was conducted at Bank of America’s … Read more
Lately it seems that a lot of my work has been about the role or definition of a manager vs. a leader. I was surprised that there are as many interpretations of the roles as there are definitions in Webster’s Dictionary. You need both, and … Read more
Most of us are very happy to share our opinions with others. You can’t really help but have an opinion – however, it may or may not be a fact, or based on facts. Opinions are just our interpretation of an event or a series … Read more
Can you really “manage time?” So many books, presentations and training sessions are devoted to “time management” that one would think it’s something you can manage. However, time is a constant, it never changes. There are 24 hours in a day, 7 days in a … Read more
I am frequently asked, “What makes a great leader?” There are a lot of good answers to this question, but when I really think about the most successful, respected leaders, one characteristic comes to mind – predicting what’s ahead down the road. Knowing what direction … Read more