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A couple of nights ago I made sauteed chicken breasts for dinner, with a white wine pan sauce to make it a little more interesting. Briefly, here’s how you make a pan sauce (and yes, I promise this is going somewhere): you add a quarter cup of wine and a quarter cup of chicken broth to the pan, perhaps with a bit of mustard, and then boil it until the half-cup of liquid is reduced down to a total of ...
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I just finished watching a town meeting with Bill Gates and Warren Buffett that was taped at Columbia Business School last month. The entire meeting was immensely illuminating, but I was fascinated by one thing Warren Buffett said. Before I get to that, let me say that both Mr. Buffett and Mr. Gates were exceedingly optimistic about the future of our country and our economy. [You, at your cynical best: “Yeah, I’d be optimistic too if I were worth $50 ...
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I haven’t blogged in over a week. Nor have I Tweeted, Facebooked, or LinkedIn. I’ve fallen off my self-imposed schedule. Part of this is for good reason: I’ve been meeting with colleagues face-to-face, in Phoenix, Denver, and Breckenridge. Social media is great, but nothing will ever beat getting together with colleagues over a glass of wine or a couple of beers and talking shop. So that’s the good reason. The bad reason is that I got lazy. I got used ...
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I guess I’m getting a new roof. I don’t want to get a new roof, but I guess I’m getting one. I mean, I know I’ve needed a new roof. My neighborhood, and therefore my house, is 20 years old, and most of my neighbors have already replaced their roofs. I’ve been holding out because I’d rather spend my money on candy and ice cream. Still, in the past two or three years I’ve received dozens, possibly hundreds, of flyers ...
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This weekend I’ll be heading to Phoenix (current temperature: 1,000,000 degrees) for the annual convention of my colleagues in the National Speakers Association, followed by a week with my mastermind group in Denver. (For the record, there are a couple of speaking engagements sprinkled in there as well.) I’m greatly looking forward to both of these events (except for the aforementioned blistering heat) because it gives me a chance to spend time with some of the most successful people in ...
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A good leader is, among other things, a good communicator. As a professional speaker, I attend a lot of corporate and association conferences. I’ve seen hundreds of CEOs, presidents, and other leaders address their people. And I’ve found that, all other things being equal, the most effective communicators are those who can say what they need to say in the least amount of time (while keeping it engaging). The ineffective ones are those who drone on and on, generally eating ...
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Don’t look now, but you may be going through life with blinders on. Actually, we all are to some extent—some of us more so than others. What do I mean by this? Well, I grew up in Amish country, where horses and buggies are a common sight. Because horses have amazing peripheral vision and are easily distracted, the Amish put blinders on the horses so that they can only see straight ahead. This is a very good thing for a ...
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“Office politics” has gotten a bad name, but it’s really nothing more or less than the informal communications network of an organization. At the first TV station I worked at, there was a guy named Rick who had really figured out this network to the nth degree. He had determined who the key players were in the organization, and who had influence over these key players (for example, the General Manager’s adminstrative assistant had influence over the General Manager). He ...
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So…where are you going to be when the recession ends? Because it will end, you know. Not that there’ll be a specific date, like V-E Day (that’s Victory in Europe Day for you kids in the audience—May 8, 1945, when Nazi Germany surrendered, ending the European portion of World War II; also for you kids in the audience, World War II was a big, big war that happened before you were born). But at some point the economy is going ...
Continue Reading →A few weeks ago I wrote an article called 3 Beatles Songs Every Leader Should Know. My premise was that in the Beatles’ 200+ oeuvre, there are a number of songs that, by their title alone, could give a successful business leader plenty of food for thought. Today we’re going to look at three more:
Tomorrow Never Knows (from the Revolver album, 1966): We can study trends, we can examine the prognostications of futurists, we can even read tea ...
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