“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
“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
“You will either step forward into growth or you will step back into safety.” – Abraham Maslow A recent survey of international business leaders concluded that the #1 focus for those leaders was ‘profitable growth’. Lots of people hear ‘growth’ and they immediately think of new products or new markets or really successful salespeople. But … Read more
“He who knows others is wise; he who knows himself is enlightened.” – Lao Tzu We as leaders spend a lot of time thinking & worrying about things that are external to ourselves. Customers, competitors, the people who work with and for us, the government, etc. And rightly so. All of those things require us … Read more
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