“However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.” – Winston Churchill I’ve spent some time lately speaking with various groups about change, things that drive successful change, things you can do to be better at making change, etc. I’ve run across a common theme with a number of those groups. It isn’t … Read more
“To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.” – Henri-Louis Bergson One of the realities of life for most people is the search for a plateau. When you hear people talk about the future, a big portion of what they say usually involves comments … Read more
“Blessed are the flexible, for they will not be bent out of shape.” – Anonymous I’ve been fortunate over the past few weeks to spend a lot of time with some really great business leaders thinking about and working on the future. We’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out WHERE each of … Read more
“Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.” – Warren G. Bennis I recently was fortunate enough to work with a business that wanted to significantly change their culture. I’ll spare the details, but it’s sufficient to say things were not good and management wanted a change. Part of the process involved working with … Read more
“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” – Leo Tolstoy One of the core responsibilities of leaders in the 21st century is to be agents of change. There are so many variables and so much chaos in the world that it sometimes seems that change is the only certainty … Read more
“The tragedy in life doesn’t lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach.” – Benjamin Mays Last week in this space I vented a little bit about beliefs and how they drive our behavior and how so many people don’t believe they can change. Someone emailed me and … Read more
“You must make your mark on this earth, and, if you have never done so, it is simply because you neglected to use the powers you have, or you have neglected to develop them.” – John Henry Patterson I’ve written about belief previously in this space (here, for example), and about the reality that if … Read more
“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.” – Friedrich Nietzsche I’ve used the above quote in this space before, maybe more than once. The older I get and the more people I meet, the more I want to get it printed on a … Read more
“Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won’t come in.” – Alan Alda As humans, we have a number of needs. Two of our more basic needs are safety and security. We want to be safe, comfortable, feel like no one’s going to … Read more
“I worry that our lives are like soap operas. We can go for months and not tune in to them, then six months later we look in and the same stuff is still going on.” – Jane Wagner I have a good friend who regularly talks about companies having ‘groundhog years’. What he means is … Read more
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