Matt Heemstra 
“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool.” – Richard Feynman There are a lot of balancing acts that leaders are expected to perform. Leaders need to consider what’s best for the business without losing sight of what’s best for customers or employees. Leaders … Read more
“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.” – Steve Jobs We spend a lot of time in this space talking about leading organizations. Today, I’m thinking more about us as leaders, and what it means to lead ourselves. I know a lot of leaders who work really hard and put … Read more
“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” – Alvin Toffler There are a lot of leaders who like to talk about how hard they work, how many hours they’re putting in, all the sacrifices they make, etc. For those … Read more
“Intuition will tell the thinking mind where to look next.” – Jonas Salk Sometimes as leaders we struggle to figure out what’s next. We know things need to change, whether it’s how we lead, what we expect from our people, what we do for our clients or customers, or any number of other things. There … Read more
“When you have exhausted all the possibilities, remember this – you haven’t.” – Thomas Edison I had a conversation with a leadership team recently that was really frustrated. They felt like their organization was stuck. It wasn’t that things were going poorly, but they weren’t really improving either. It seemed to all of them that … Read more
“There is only one thing more painful than learning from experience and that is not learning from experience.” – Archibald MacLeish Change leads to all kinds of things. Excitement, frustration, success, roadblocks, progress and setbacks. And probably a bunch more. Change is a permanent part of the human condition and so are all the things … Read more
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” – Thomas Edison We’ve spent a lot of time on change over the past few weeks. Purposefully looking for change, pushing for change, etc. That’s great, one of our loyal readers said. But change is hard, and quite often it doesn’t work out … Read more
“Most people prefer the certainty of misery to the misery of uncertainty.” – Virginia Satir Last week in this space the conversation was about purposefully looking for change, seeking out change, and how even the best and the brightest will fail if they can’t make change, and how being the best and the brightest today … Read more
“It’s not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent; it’s the one that’s most adaptable to change.” – Charles Darwin I’ve been around a number of leadership teams lately that are extremely impressive for their intelligence. These are people who’ve got years of experience, and they’re extremely knowledgeable about what they … Read more
“Everything you can imagine is real.” – Pablo Picasso Many hours have been spent over the years trying to define what characteristics and behaviors define great leaders. Some things show up over and over again – work ethic, intelligence, integrity, etc. Those kinds of things will always matter. The world is always changing, though, and … Read more
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