One of my favorite movies is the cult classic, “Office Space” written by Mike Judge, the nefarious creator of Beavis and Butthead. In the film he portrays management as being so incompetent that it’s comedic. But it’s easy to miss the powerful lessons amidst the caricature. Let’s unpack one of the most-loved scenes to learn…
What if there were a way to instantly get the results you want? More money, more time, better employees—whatever you want? I know what you’re thinking: “Isn’t that the result of hard work?” “Don’t I have to change as a person?” “What if I haven’t earned those results yet?” You’re thinking too small! You may…
In part one of this series, I deconstructed the infamous, “There is no spoon” scene from The Matrix to begin our celebration of the film’s twenty year anniversary. Next, I want to examine two important, and opposite choices in the movie that represent aspects of the human psyche: the choice Neo makes to leave the…
This spring marks the 20th anniversary of the release of The Matrix, one of the most spiritually significant mainstream films of our time. It’s a movie about waking up, and it brilliantly uses some ancient zen wisdom that I thought I’d unpack in a series of articles. Part of the genius of The Matrix is…
Question: How do you know if you can push your people further? Answer: They will tell you, if you know how to listen. Recently I was messaging with a Clear and Open member, let’s call him Andy. It went like this. This is a good example of the power of asking questions. Josef: “Relook at…
I grew up in the historic town of Concord, Massachusetts, a couple miles from Thoreau’s Walden pond, the site of the first battle of the Revolutionary War, and a dozen other things that would probably bore you as much as they did me as a kid. In third grade, my class took an intrepid field…
“I’m working on the mustard on my chin. It used to be way worse.” I helped a CEO (let’s call her Jane) of a financial services company identify her over-responsible tendencies and how she caused herself overwhelm. She was spread incredibly thin and wasn’t making time for what was most important. I discovered she had…
I’m not joking when I say what I’m most proud of is not killing myself. I lost everything in my life that mattered to me over the course of about 18 months. Just one piece of that was the 1,500 square foot home I owned in Oregon. Following some bad advice, I sold it at…
There are scores of strategies to manage yourself, and I want to talk about the one most often forgotten: self-love. Anyone who has raised children knows that love doesn’t mean giving a person whatever they want. Self-love is no exception. One of the reasons I don’t like the term self-discipline is because it connotes forcing…
The second time I got fired, it was for corporate espionage. I’ve never told anyone this. In my mid-twenties, a few years before I became a coach, I recruited for high-tech companies in the Bay Area. I mostly hated it. It’s not uncommon practice in that world to “poach” employees from one company and move…