“Don’t tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.” – George S. Patton I attended a conference for family businesses recently, and one of the recurring themes was business-related family conflict. The conversations went in many directions, but one underlying theme was the conflict … Read more
“You cannot do a kindness too soon, because you never know how soon it will be too late.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson One of the fundamental flaws of human nature is our tendency to put things off. We view the change or the unknown as scary, so it’s easier to stay in our comfortable routines … Read more
“There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.” – Ernest Hemingway I meet a lot of leaders who want to ‘do strategic planning’. They want to look out into the future, envision what they want to be as a business, then start working … Read more
“Our own dilemma is that we hate change and love it at the same time; what we really want is for things to remain the same but get better.” – Sydney J. Harris We might hate to admit it, but Mr. Harris was correct. We want things to get better, while at the same time … Read more
“Nobody ever wrote down a plan to broke…lazy, or stupid. Those things are what happen when you don’t have a plan.” – Larry Winget I had a very engaging conversation with someone a few weeks ago about strategy development and planning. The core question was, given the rate at which our world is currently changing, … Read more
“Our greatest fear should not be of failure…but of succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter.” – Francis Chan These days it seems like the acceptable and laudable answer to “How are you doing?” is “Busy!”, as though that’s an accomplishment. Our society has apparently decided that being busy is an achievement in … Read more
“There is only one thing more painful than learning from experience and that is not learning from experience.” – Archibald MacLeish It’s an unfortunate part of the human condition that we make mistakes on a regular basis. We can hardly go an hour, much less a day, without messing something up. It might be a … Read more
“If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.” – Lao Tzu It’s not groundbreaking to suggest that leaders need to always be thinking about the future. Everybody knows that already. That’s why organizations have planning sessions, retreats, etc. We’re all trying to discern what our business needs to be … Read more
“You’re going to come across people in your life who will say all the right words at all the right times. But in the end, it’s always their actions you should judge them by.” – Nicholas Sparks Core values and culture and all those kinds of things are very trendy these days. Walk into any … Read more
“To do anything in this world worth doing, we must not stand back shivering and thinking of the cold and danger, but jump in and scramble through as well as we can.” – Sydney Smith I think it’s fear of the unknown that stops us. We’d rather have the unpleasant reality that we’re familiar with … Read more
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