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Leadership

Why I Stopped Making Resolutions

The calendar has recently turned, and, with the change in year comes one constant: people setting grand resolutions and failing spectacularly.

No, this isn’t some deep-seated lack of faith in humanity – it’s fact. Research shows only eight percent of people actually achieve their New Year’s resolutions. This failure has, unfortunately, become so comically commonplace that it’s expected.

The question is, why? Read more

Beyond Wikileaks: The Dark Side of Email

Here’s a scary thought: Try and picture a world without email.

Spooky, no?

Indeed, it’s hard to fathom our world functioning as we know it without the wonder that is email. It’s cheap, it’s fast, it’s convenient, it’s just… easy. Few words can be as harrowing and bone-chilling for a business as “email is down.”

But for all its immeasurable benefits, there is a dark side to email. One that can eat away at the very core of any business – even the most successful.

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Debate Debacles: How NOT To Talk To Your Clients

Amidst the helmeted hairdos, hyperbaric hyperbole and heated harangues, a presidential debate was apparently held this past week.

The Donald on the right. Madame Secretary on the left. And a collective nation of weary voters crammed smack in the middle.

News flash: The presidential debate was anything but presidential.

Pointed questions went pointedly unanswered. Vague claims and misleading statistics and snide references were haphazardly thrown around. And copious sniffles abounded.

This was not America’s finest moment – at least from a business perspective.

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Got Passion? Feed Their Desire.

You’ve got product. They want purpose.
You’ve got a commodity. They want camaraderie.

Turns out, what people want most today, is uncannily similar to what they’ve always wanted. Only for thousands of years, those needs used to be supplied by community, culture and organized religion. In today’s scattered and individualistic society, those moorings have been severed, leaving a profound, gaping hollow.

Savvy brands are stepping in to fill that void, building causes and cultures around themselves. Read more

The Art of Delegating

Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer, of Stanford University, accurately summed up the responsibility of a leader:

Your most important task as a leader is to teach people how to think and ask the right questions, so that the world doesn’t fall apart if you take a day off.

Perhaps no concept in business is more essential, and at the same time so colossally misunderstood, than delegation. Any rational person knows that they have strengths and limitations. It follows, that tasks should be divvied based on each employees abilities.

Yet for some reason, many business struggle to properly delegate—and the consequences are severe. Sloppy projects. Missed deadlines. Angry clients.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

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Kill the Manager!

Now before everyone gets up in arms, I’m certainly not advocating violence in any shape or form. But I do want to bring attention to a fundamental issue that, unfortunately, tends to get skated over a bit.

It’s no secret that company culture is a critical element to success in any business. It’s a huge reason for the success of companies such as Google, Zappos, and Southwest Airlines. Quality employees and valuable clients alike are attracted to a place with a vibrant, positive culture.

Great culture starts at the top. Those in executive and managerial positions have the power to set the tone for the workplace environment. It’s an enormous, far-reaching responsibility, because the environment they create will ultimately determine the quality of the employees and the business they attract. Guess that’s why they’re paid the big bucks.

There is a common denominator that all companies with great culture tend to share: they understand that there is a difference between managing and leading.

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Put Your Profit First. Always.

As humans, we’re all creatures of habit. We have our morning routine. Our work routine. Our pre-meeting routine. We all just like to get into a rhythm and keep it that way.

After all, sticking to a routine is the key to being productive. Successful people are well-known as sticklers for routine. Routine provides structure. It establishes a sense of security.

Which makes having to change routine so hard.

It means tearing down the habits we worked so hard to create. It means demolishing the cocoon of security around us. Forgetting what we always knew.

Yesterday, I learned this lesson firsthand.

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Business Lessons from 30,000 Feet

I’m always amazed how the greatest business insights can sometimes come from the most unexpected places.

On a recent flight back from Israel, I struck up a conversation with one of the stewards. We made a little small talk, and soon our chat turned to his job. During the course of our discussion, he lamented to me that, although he always tried to be friendly to every passenger, he had no real business incentive to be cordial.

He described the startling lack of employee appreciation. There was no recognition from his superiors for better customer service. No compliment for going the extra mile. Positive feedback was from passengers, not superiors. The only way to get noticed? Publish something foolish on social media. Boy, would that work!

Instead, he explained, the employee growth module of this airline was, essentially, “survival of the fittest.” Been here for 4 years? Congratulations on lasting this long, here’s a raise.

This is a very troubling and flawed model.

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