Twenty-five years ago this month, I was unceremoniously dumped out of the corporate world. While I had job offers, I knew some of what didn’t work in that last job would still be there in these new ones, so I decided to try something else. I chose to bet on myself. The early days of…
Is the drive to achieve a powerful motivator for you? If so, it’s likely been a positive force in your life–that drive, along with grit and hard work, has likely brought you acclaim and success. But, I’ll bet that no matter how hard you work, or how much you’ve achieved, you’re still pushing for more….
Imagine we live in a world where everyone wears glasses that have a particular distorting effect. When you wear the glasses, your senses notice only the positive in what others have or do and diminish what you have or do. Through those glasses, my experience would be: What would it be like to live with…
My last message, “The Displaced CEO,” elicited a strong reaction. Many of you replied to that email, telling me how attracted you are to the tactical, short-term priorities and how difficult it is to stay in the Architect’s seat. One CEO was even more pointed. She said, “I want to sit in the heavy silence of…
In most organizations, attention aligns in layers. Frontline staff solve today’s problems. Managers handle the month. Directors own the year. But there is only one role in the company designed to look over the horizon. To identify where the market is going and how we will win there. That is the role of the Architect….
When I was a young leader, our company followed a rhythm you could set your watch by. We would hold a strategic planning meeting in the spring to review our core purpose and values, progress on our BHAG, and update the five-year plan. Over the summer, we turned that plan into a budget that we’d…
I was heads down developing workshop content for a client’s team meeting. I had the outline open, the cursor was blinking, and I was stuck. I knew what I wanted to do, but the structure wasn’t coming together. The longer I stared at it, the more my mind started to wander, and before I knew…
After a 5-hour flight, we were finally taxiing into the gate. There was a lot of excitement around me. I was headed to LA for training, but a large group of people nearby was headed to Hawaii. They had a tight connection to make the flight to their dream vacation, and they were gathering their…
I spent two hours the other morning struggling to write a single email. I made two different starts. Neither of them felt right. As the deadline for sending it loomed, my frustration and anger rose, further clouding my thinking. My natural instinct in those moments is to bear down. To push harder, forcing the words…
When I was about 11, my parents took my sister and me skiing for the first time. They weren’t skiers, but they wanted us to have the experience. We spent a day in lessons, and by the next afternoon, we were practicing turns on the bunny slope. Right at the bottom of that slope stood…