From the category archives:
While sitting at a traffic light recently, I noticed the printing on the mini-van next to me: “The Reptile Experience: We’ll bring the reptiles to you. Birthday parties, Bar Mitzvahs, parish picnics.” As a former high school prom chairman and the host of hundreds of parties since, I can honestly say that including reptiles in [...]
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Sometime in the past two years, perhaps while I was distracted by the vampire craze, zombies started presenting a more menacing presence. Scores of television programs, movies, and books have seemingly sprung from nowhere to teach us to survive a zombie attack. For example, Max Brooks, son of Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft, has dominated [...]
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There “they” go again, changing something that was just fine to start with, but this mistake may have been short-lived. Coca-Cola Co. plans to switch back to its time-honored red can just one month after rolling out the snow-white animal can the company introduced for the holidays. I’m no innovation-averse Luddite. On the contrary, look [...]
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Last night I saw Moneyball, the blockbuster movie based on Michael Lewis’s best seller, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game. The movie has been successful for some obvious reasons, one being that Brad Pitt is not too hard to look at for two hours. But I liked it for an imperceptible one. It [...]
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Esteemed Irish colleague, Patrick Daly, shared this story on a website we both frequent: An economist, a chemist and a physicist are marooned on a desert island. Their only food is a can of beans, but they have no can opener. The physicist says, “Let’s try to focus the tropical sun onto the lid – [...]
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Yesterday The St. Louis Business Journal sponsored a program for CFOs to discuss the current decisions in Washington and their impact on individuals and businesses. To make his point, one of the panel members asked audience members to raise their hands if their companies had laid off workers during the recent economy. While those people [...]
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Today marks the 150th anniversary of a date that doesn’t merit celebration. Rather, it commemorates a dark time in our nation’s history—a time characterized by chaos, change, and strife among those who shared a common nation, mutual friendships, and joint ancestry. Decades of growing strife between North and South erupted in civil war on April [...]
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You don’t want your operating plan to concentrate on the past—to focus on the reflection in the rearview mirror. You also don’t want it to be a distortion of future possibilities—like an image in a fun-house mirror. Instead, your operating plan should be a kaleidoscope that exhibits various symmetrical patterns that reflect the loose bits [...]
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Much of my consulting and coaching work involves industries and functions that must follow the rules—exactly and profoundly. The SEC demands compliance from publicly traded companies; specific industries require adherence to prescribed protocols; and best practices dictate practical approaches. All good. However, overusing a strength creates a weakness. People who operate in regulated industries and [...]
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People change when the pain of staying where they are overcomes the fear of change. Sometimes, however, people don’t perceive the pain before significant damage has occurred. Like insidious heart disease, symptoms of impending destruction may go unnoticed. As the senior leader, your job is to build a culture of change, one that supports [...]
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