I met a guy named Marcus who was based in Germany and ran an IT services group, which was based in Silicon Valley. Several times a year Marcus would fly to California to spend time with his team, chatting, having meals, talking about work, but also interacting on a human and personal level. He calls […]
Wayne Rooney is widely regarded as an astonishing soccer player – one of the greatest playing the game today. Also mercurial, brooding, even thuggish at times. He was recently banned for a game for intentionally kicking Montenegro’s Miodrag Dzudovic. As a kid he played non-stop – in the streets, in the house, in the backyard. […]
Yes, but what’s remarkable is that he is doing it. He is actually practicing these behaviors, while many leaders are simply talking about them.” – Jill Klein, Melbourne Business School I had a conversation recently with Campbell Jones, COO of a large Australian company. He had risen steadily in the organization after years of dedicated […]
80% of CEOs think their company makes a killer product. 8% of their customers agree. Your awesomeness is good. But humility will help.
Recently Annie (then 6, now 7) and I were at the store picking out a card to for her to send to a friend. In the card display was a big section dedicated to Taylor Swift. We examined each card – Taylor Swift looking dreamy, sassy, alluring, or even defiant. Taylor can certainly strike a […]
In October of 2003 in Atlanta at a global company meeting, as the new CEO of Schering-Plough, Fred Hassan stood on stage before thousands of sales professionals from around the world and said: If you are in a position of making a sale and doing something you are not comfortable with – something you won’t […]
As a family we ski quite a bit in the winter. We’re about two hours from Sugarloaf Mountain in Maine and the kids love it. A couple years ago, I would regularly launch off a series of ski jumps in the terrain park. It’s exhilarating. Drop down to approach the ramp, race up to the […]
If you work in a big company, with people around the world operating in different cultures, on different projects, with different skillsets and different world views, how can you create shared conviction and vision? Don Vanthournout is the Chief Learning Officer of Accenture, a premier global management-services and advisory organization with more than 259,000 associates […]
True story: a couple of years ago a friend came over to visit and chat about some business ideas. My daughter was napping upstairs, my wife was out running, and the two of us were sitting in lawn chairs in the backyard watching our two boys (6 and 8 at the time) try to “drop […]
Our twelve year old son walked into the lunchroom at Sugarloaf ski resort a couple weeks ago and said quietly, “I learned how to do a 360.” I said, “Awesome! That’s pretty cool. How did you learn that?” He said he just decided to do it. Within 24 hours our ten year old and his […]