“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…
Over the last few weeks at Clear and Open, we discussed employee engagement often. One of the challenges of addressing disengagement in the workplace is the cultural issue. I don’t mean your company culture, although that’s inevitably a factor. I mean the world culture. We live in a disengaged world, and it didn’t use to…
Do you have challenges with impatience? Consider: How’s your ability to focus? Do you feel like you’re on track to your long-term goals? Do you get anxious not checking your phone for a while? These questions all have a common theme, stay with me. It’s easy to see we’ve become an instant-gratification society. Not long…
What if I said there’s something that causes managers and employees needless suffering every day in this world that almost no one talks about? Would you believe me? Can you handle a two-minute psychology lesson? I promise it’s worth it. (And it is one of the most needed leadership lessons.) I’m talking about authority projections.…
How does choice relate to disengagement? Allow me to digress. My favorite scene in The Devil Wears Prada is when Meryl Streep’s character, Miranda Priestly, gives an incisive mini-lecture on the invisible and pervasive power of the fashion industry. Check out the clip, it’s less than two minutes. (Not a spoiler!) This scene brings tears…