My latest book (which launches in 2 weeks!) has the unusual title, How to Fail as a Leader. Partly, that’s tongue in cheek—I want you to succeed, of course. But partly it’s about the power of learning from our failures. Many of the greatest learning moments in my life were right after I failed. For
People talk about managing time, but we can’t get more time. The real question is, Are you making best use of the time you have? One of the keys to that is having enough energy to engage fully. And one of the most significant—and overlooked—ways to increase your energy is improve your sleep. I’ve spent years
On April 25th, my new book hits the stores. It’s titled How to Fail as a Leader: A fast-paced fable about leaders who totally biff strategy and execution but learn enough to win in the end. It’s an adventure story embedded with practical and profound leadership lessons. It’s a story of two leaders who learn
Last night, I had a great phone call with my personal leadership coach. Yes, everyone benefits from coaching, even leadership coaches. It’s not just about learning from someone who knows more in a field than you. Teachers are valuable, too. But great leadership coaching helps differently than great teaching. Coaching is more about asking the right
Stories are how humans make sense of their lives. “She chose this, which caused that, which caused him to choose this…” Since the dawn of time, we have shaped our cultures around stories. Every strong organization—whether a nation, a company or a family—has a founding story. Many have described political races as a contest between stories.
Life can be summed up as a series of payments and rewards. Each choice you make includes both elements. You will always get some reward for your choices and you will always pay the price. Whether the rewards are worth the price is one of the big questions of your life. Every choice we make
The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time is today. -Chinese Proverb Have you ever had a dream? Something you think would be awesome to do, that you would be so proud to have done? I have. And I still do. Grand goals like ours can feel so far
A huge question was asked this past weekend at a dinner party. One of my good friends is exhausted from wrestling with multiple, lingering health issues in his family. Another friend asked him how he copes with the stress and frustration. He said that some of what he did was fun in the moment, but really
It’s common to be impatient for success to come sooner. I’ve been there more than once. But it’s not always better to succeed sooner. There are times when slower is better. If you know me, you know slow is not my style. It took a lot of time for me to realize this. One of
You may have noticed a recent post or two about car troubles. It’s been a crazy season for breakdowns in my house. In the last five weeks, both our cars have broken down (multiple times), the freezer quit, then the fridge started freezing our food. We even had to fix the kitchen sink, and not just in