In human affairs, the distance between the leaders and the average is a constant. If leadership performance is high, the average will go up. The effective executive knows that it is easier to raise one leader’s performance than to raise the performance of a whole mass. ~ Peter Drucker in The Effective Executive Leaders I…
Founders of creative service firms and other agencies have built a platform that’s created leverage for them. They have a team. They’re leading an organization from a positional sense. However, the team doesn’t always do what they expect, and sometimes team members act in puzzling ways that contradict the direction they have set. To gain…
The quality of our lives is directly proportional to the quality of questions we ask ourselves on a consistent basis. If you ask better questions, you will have better focus and better results… ~ Rich Diviney Early in my career, I had a job where I traveled a lot. My office was in Chicago, our…
“I wanted to ask, ‘Why did you let this happen?’ but that was blasphemy. You never ask why. It was not a question for you to ask.” ~ Nnedi Okorafor, Binti As I have worked to grow my own leadership, one superpower is self-awareness. If I can see myself the way others see me and become more…
A few years ago, I read Being Mortal by Atul Gawande. It’s an excellent book about end-of-life issues and I highly recommend it, but the idea that most stuck with me is summarized in this quote: “We want autonomy for ourselves and safety for those we love. That remains the main problem and paradox for…
Did you know that Warren Buffett has created over 90% of his wealth since he turned 65? He became a millionaire in 1962 when he was 32 years old. He became a billionaire in 1990 when he was 60. Last year he reached $20 Billion in net worth (after giving away much of his Berkshire…
I’ve had a raft of conversations this month with founders who are looking back over their shoulder. One came across a job posting that looked so attractive, almost alluring! Another just started daydreaming about what it would be like to get a nice, cushy corporate job. (With benefits!) I get it. I had those fantasies…
One of the most painful truths I’ve ever encountered is that if I want to be good at something, I have to tolerate being terrible at it for a while. That feeling of not knowing what I’m doing is terribly uncomfortable – especially since there are many ways I could spend my time working within…
When I started my business, I was selling help with business operations for founders wanting to grow their businesses. That’s what I thought people wanted, and I had a track record of doing it. Sales are easy when you sell folks what they already want! I was riding a Trojan Horse. Talking about growth (what…
So far as I can tell, there are three ways of being in the world. One, I can decide that I’m fundamentally broken. So I try to hide my broken parts, shine up the acceptable parts, and only show people the parts they might like. This is what I call living in the false self….