I read an interview with General Norman Schwarzkopf several years ago in which he was asked if he ever thought about defeat during a battle. He said that in the middle of a battle, there’s no time to think about defeat. You just keep thinking about different ways to win. Schwarzkopf’s observations apply directly to business. They […]
WHEN YOU ARE IN a leadership role, you are frequently in the position of giving other people critical feedback. And in criticism, as in comedy, timing is everything. When you’re giving constructive feedback (including positive feedback, although I’m focusing on constructive criticism below), try to give that feedback as soon as possible. Here’s why: The […]
Have you ever wanted to be a much better negotiator? To create more effective teams in your company? To communicate much more persuasively in your business and personal life? If you did possess the skills to do those things better, how would your life be better and richer? If you’re interested in how the smartest […]
THE BIOGRAPHIES OF well-known leaders prove something you may have always believed: If you want to know why an adult is the way they are, look at their childhood. That’s exactly what Mark Leibovitch did more than 10 years ago for a Washington Post profile of Steve Case, the reclusive, competitive genius who was then […]
WIP sports talk radio in Philadelphia this morning played what they said was a comment by Andy Reid, head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles, in response to two recent firings of NFL head coaches. “It’s a rough business,” he replied. Really? Being a US soldier in Afghanistan is a rough business. Being a police officer […]
Stephen Covey says you lead people and manage processes. I agree with that. If you’re in a leadership position, the implications are you want to spend as little time managing processes as possible, because your most effective and high-leverage role is leading the ones who are supposed to be managing. Think of it this way: […]
I’m an efficiency nut. I love learning new ways of saving time, shaving time off existing methods and generally doing more with the time I have each day. A few great books I read recently on the subject are David Allen’s book Getting Things Done and Dan Kennedy’s No B.S. Time Management for Entrepreneuers. Here […]
“Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.” – Groucho Marx. Over the past year or so, I’ve become obsessed with making better use of my time. I’ve read pretty much everything I can get my hands on in search of ideas, and here are 5 good ones you can start using today.
I recall my grandmother saying “onward and upward” to motivate us when I was growing up. The funny thing about memory is that it’s not always precise: my mother claims my grandmother never said it. Like Mark Twain, though, I can remember everything from when I was a kid whether it happened or not, and […]
Last week on Tuesday at 6:06 pm, Yahoo fired its CEO, Carol Bartz. A FORTUNE magazine article by Patricia Sellers ran the next day on the CNN Money website. Bartz describes how she was fired by over the phone by Yahoo board chairman Roy Bostock. According to the piece, Bartz called Bostock at a pre-arranged […]
