“I think therefore I am.” Most people have heard this pithy piece of philosophy, but have little idea what it means, much less how it sowed the seeds for myriad management problems. Today, you get to blame the 17th-century French philosopher who coined the phrase, René Descartes, for all your troubles. By understanding what he…
Accountability has been an issue for humans for a long time, but it’s recently becoming stickier for a reason that may make you roll your eyes: Millennials. Hold on, I’m not running them down like so many do. Everything has a light side and a shadow. Generally speaking, millennials are entrepreneurial, highly creative, incredibly positive,…
A great subject line gets at best twenty percent of viewers this far, and you’re met with: A pithy appeal to one of your biggest problems. You know the one. I know the one. That way you think, “They understand what it’s like to be me.” And then the volume turns up on that pain…
You can change the course of someone’s life by seeing something in them they don’t see themselves, and then showing them they can do something they think they cannot. This is the essence of great mentoring. I spent my summers as a kid at a pool club. Anyone could go in the three foot section,…
“You must do the thing you think you cannot do.” — Eleanor Roosevelt What hard thing is life asking you to do that you haven’t done yet? Confession time: I’m going to tell you what I was avoiding, and still wrestling with. Last autumn, I got a very sweet and tentative email from a coach…
Besides in hearts and minds? More than ever in our history people talk about “improving culture” in and outside of business. Unfortunately, it can’t be done, so there’s a great deal of wasted effort and stagnation. I’ll explain. There’s no such thing as culture, strictly speaking. A culture is the result of a group of…
Excellence is an expression of care. Where there’s a deficit of care, there’s one of competence. Of course, everyone wants to say they care. They know they’re supposed to care, but the truth is shown in actions, not words. It’s observable that most humans care about their own survival, but what puzzles me is how…
I learned an amazing thing about accountability during my time as an executive at EMyth that is about to transform the way you manage. We interviewed every exiting client to see how we could have improved. We found almost every client wanted to be held more accountable. Their coaches, of course, were shocked. There are…
I had a realization I wanted to share with you. When I first created Clear Workspace, Open Mind—which is over five hours of video that systematically leads you to become powerfully organized and productive—the purpose was to help people make time to do more important things. I accidentally discovered another function, perhaps its higher service,…
It may be news to you, in the consulting world it’s cliché: money is not at the top of the list for employee motivation. Just Google the term “employees motivated by money” and see the countless studies and articles about the importance of respect, culture, recognition, etc. Are we surprised? The stock language variations of…