Blog

  The honeymoon is over. Which is not a bad thing. Solid relationships founded on trust and mutual respect grow, deepen, and strengthen when you realize that your husband, wife, partner, parent, clergy person - you get the idea - is not perfect and that you have...

Remember, the primary benefit of strategic planning isn’t just the plan itself. It’s the result of what happens when stakeholders come together, often for the first time, to work as a team. This past Monday, in Part 1 of 5, Initiation and Discovery, I introduced you...

One of my clients famously likened strategic planning to something that Stalin did, so I'm hoping the illustration with the pooch might make this a bit more enjoyable. Think of our four-legged friend as your team, and the statue as your company. You know you have the...

Sometimes, a list is all you need for a kickstart or to get things back on track. I've used this one for over a decade, and it has always served me and my clients well. I hope it provides value for you.   We say what we mean and we mean what we say. Commit to...

Regardless of your politics, one would be hard-pressed to describe the past year and our current situation as anything other than disruptive. We’re becoming accustomed to, and exhausted by, the frequency of the daily disturbances that now populate our lives. In a...

In their 18th Annual Reputation Quotient Summary Report, the Harris Poll found that the biggest damage done to corporate reputation is a result of “intentional wrongdoing or illegal actions by corporate leaders, or lying or misrepresenting facts about a product or...

Jack Ma, the founder and executive chairman of the Alibaba Group recently spoke at the World Economic Forum about the future of education. Ma is not only a successful businessman, whose net worth is estimated at $42.6 billion, but a former English teacher. The...

When I was a kid, my dad told me how his father did business on a handshake. Even at an early age, that didn't make sense to me. I knew enough to understand that people signed things when they made agreements. But my dad told me that for my grandfather, a person's...

Keep going today. Keep moving amid every obstacle. Keep moving amid every mountain of opposition. If you will do that with dignity, when the history books are written in the future, the historians will have to look back and say, "There lived a great people. A people...

Match Game. The Ford Mustang. Senator Sam Ervin and Watergate. Or as I like to call it, “do you remember?” It’s a game I find myself playing whenever I meet someone around my age. I like reminiscing about a past that feels kinder and gentler, though unless you were a...