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Since my job is to help leaders produce seriously award-winning teams, I’m exceedingly (some would say irritatingly) interested in what makes great teams tick. Turns out I’m in good company! The folks at MIT’s Human Dynamics Laboratory have been working on this question for some time now, and they’ve come up with an answer. A single answer.
The MIT ...
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I was struck this morning by a LinkedIn posting by my friend and colleague Eileen McDargh. Here’s what she wrote:
Get in control by reading only what matters. And what matters concerns your business, your future, your soul.
Another friend and colleague of mine, the late Charlie “Tremendous” Jones, was famous for saying:
Continue Reading →You will be the same person in five years as you are today except for the people you meet and ...
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I was at an event recently where one business speaker asserted that there were four words you should never tell a customer: “I can’t do that.” And he had some very good reasons for this assertion:
Your competitors love it when you tell a customer, “I can’t do that.”
It’s music to their ears.
When you tell a customer, “I can’t do that,” you’re giving them an excuse to look elsewhere, and you’re opening a window of ...
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Some of you know that I used to produce a sketch comedy TV show in Seattle called Almost Live! It was on the air for fifteen years, and number one in its time slot for ten straight years. During those fifteen years, my team and I won more than 100 Emmy Awards. At the risk of sounding immodest, we were really, really good at what we did. Our ...
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It was 4:00am yesterday morning, and I was driving to the airport for a speaking engagement in Pittsburgh. This is a pretty common occurrence for me (not necessarily the Pittsburgh part, but the rest of it). All of a sudden I had one of those, “Oh no, did I leave the iron on?” moments. I forget what it was that I was actually worried about—it wasn’t the iron. Probably, “Did I lock the door?” or “Did I water the plants?” ...
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I’m getting ready to board a plane, something I do several times a week. Each time, I’m putting my trust—and my life—in the hands of the pilot. This is, in all likelihood, a person I’ve never met, and never will meet. But I rarely, if ever, think about it, and I’ll bet you don’t either. The trust is so ...
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It’s a cold, gray, rainy day here in Seattle, and I noticed fewer people at the gym this morning. Coincidence? Perhaps, but I don’t think so.
See, I almost didn’t go to the gym myself. Who wants to go to the gym on a miserable day like this?
For that matter, who wants to go to work? It’s a dreary, depressing day—a ...
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Last night I heard a television commentator say that the Republican nomination is going to come down to “who wants it more.”
I sincerely hope that this is not the case.
Republican or Democrat, I sincerely hope that we’re not going to choose our leaders on the basis of who wants it more. I mean, really, would you make any other choice ...
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Would you hire you?
A friend and I were talking recently about Michael Gerber’s seminal book, The E-Myth Revisited, and that got us talking about the by-now-almost-cliched concept of “working on the business” rather than “working in the business.” The basic idea is that a baker (to use Gerber’s example) decides to open a bake shop, and then spends all her time baking rather than running a baking business. To grossly oversimplify, Gerber is saying that, as business owners, we need ...
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See that guy on the left? The one at the Steinway? That’s Andras Schiff, one of the greatest concert pianists alive today. Andras and I have a few things in common: 1) we both play the piano; 2) we both play Steinways (although his preferred instrument is a Bosendorfer); 3) we’ve both had dinner with my sister (but not ...