Janet and I had a conversation last night about an interesting phenomenon we both happened to observe. People can self-destruct or at least derail their careers in any number of ways. However, there is one particular way that appeared to have a common thread to us that I’d like to share with you. Let me [...]

I know that size does matter, but apparently sequence matters more. The other day, we were trying to get one of those Graco portable cribs to function. It only took three steps. Janet, by far the more practical of the two of us, kept working on it. She jumped from one to three without an [...]

As I am dictating this article, I am watching my little boy play in the last soccer game of the season. They had a stellar season, even for six-year-olds. They managed—by luck, crook, and alignment of the starts—to win all but two games. But tonight, they are face to face and up against the only [...]

There’s an interesting doctrine at law. It’s called the Doctrine of Judicial Restraint. What it means is that when a court has the opportunity to decide a case on either a broader principle or a more narrow principle, the Doctrine of Judicial Restraint always suggests that the more appropriate resolution is on the narrower ruling, [...]

I learned how to drink Mate back when I spent a summer in Buenos Aires in 1980. A musky heavy herbal taste, it grew on me and I enjoyed the pomp of the bombast and gordo as part of the ritual. I drank it every day, sometimes twice a day—once in the morning and once [...]

I was having a conversation the other day with someone who works for one of our companies, and he asked me to describe what I considered to be the characteristics of an effective CEO. The conversation was informal, but what emerged out of it represented a consolidation of my observations as to what constitutes an [...]

Regardless of your politics…or your religion, for that matter, Kathleen Parker’s column on the Romney Declaration on religion was particiularly apropos. Read through the entire article. Of particular significance was Romney’s observation, quoted at the end of the article, that turly puts the American experience in perspective: “religious tolerance would be a shallow principle indeed [...]

Poor communications (e.g., of goals, methods, motives, commitment) Unclear rationale for change Lack of understanding of the urgency of change Inadequate employee mobilization and engagement Lack of courage and risk-taking (may cause change to fail by default) Complacency (resistance to change because of prior success) Too many initiatives at one time, overloading change management capacity [...]

And so, there we were, in Empoli, a Tuscan town about 45 minutes north of Castle Fiorentino, a midway point to Firenza (Florence). We had gone there for the day to take a look at what was there, since it was a whole lot bigger than Castle Fiorentino, and also to get some dinner. We [...]