Kudos to Harvard for asking a provacative question and delivering an even more compelling answer. The question I reference was posed six years ago by three B-school professors among them Rosabeth Moss Kanter, ” How might the mission of a university change in the 21st century?” The answer is even better than the question, “Throw […]
CEO
What Can You Do to Build a Fully Sighted Organization?
A fully sighted company anticipates and “sees” the obvious and the not-so-obvious events, dynamics, and influences that are critical to success versus ignoring it. According to author Margaret Heffernan who wrote Willfull Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at Our Peril says such blindness happens when there are things we should know, could know, but […]
This Lemon’s a $4.9 Billion Lulu
Lululemon founder Chip Wilson says that the famous Lululemon name had nothing to do with either lemons or any gal named Lulu. The truth is, he sold an earlier company to a group of Asians at a premium in large part because the name of that company had a lot of l’s in it….For […]
Dishwater Eyes: A Dead Give-Away
Eyes speak louder than words, if anyone’s looking. In my weekly newsletter, Packets and Pauses, about communication and presentations, I’ve been talking a lot about eye contact. How important it is, how to use it, how we screw it up. Recently, I had lunch with Some One who has an even bigger eye problem than […]
Uncharted Territory
No matter how old you are, no matter how much you’ve experienced, the river of life inevitably takes you into waters you’ve never seen or experienced before. And if those waters are especially turbulent, you might have a tendency to snatch at every tree growing along the river as you try to […]
Leadership as Theatre: General Petraeus
If you don’t define yourself, others will. This often-quoted concept is not one I thought particularly applicable to military officers until I read the May 2010 Vanity Fair article on General David Petraeus, a man I’d never thought too much about. Sitting on an airplane headed to a conference to Ft. Lauderdale, I learned […]
HeartMath’s EmWave: A Grown Up’s Toy
My idea of a cool “toy,” is anything that shows me how to do something I couldn’t do before and expands my thinking. Such toys are rare, which is why I’m excited about my newest purchase. HeartMath is a heart-research and product company whose newsletters I’ve been following on-line for years. Founder Doc Childre […]
Big-Time Fees: Big-Time Stick
It’s not nice to talk about money, so Mother-and even the Feds say. Mother, of course, was thinking manners. The Feds? Price fixing….. Yet, everybody’s doing it. Tonight, including me. It’s just too interesting, especially given the economic times. What caught my attention is media coverage about the current rash of former CEOs thought headed […]
Boone Pickens + Al Gore: Strange Bedfellows
I sometimes feel I shouldn’t be surprised by anything any more. Yet, sometimes, I am. When I heard conservative billionaire T. Boone Pickens describe his new-found friendship with former vice-president Al Gore, I laughed in disbelief along with the rest of the people at my table. Boone was serious. “If Al Gore ever invites you […]
Meg Whitman: California’s Next Governor?
Speaking to the Women Presidents Organization last Thursday near San Diego, eBay‘s former CEO discussed her past, present, and future to a crowd of about 600. As interesting as her past is, Meg Whitman’s future is bound to be a wild roller coaster ride. She hopes to be California’s next Governor, a state whose […]