Life Passages: The Ages and Stages Don’t Ever Stop

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At 21, I remember thinking,  “Now, I’m free from the worry of  getting into trouble for having a glass of champagne at a wedding.” I felt victorious for skirting any potential recriminations for drinking when it wasn’t legal to do so, although back in those days, the consequences for underage drinking didn’t feel nearly as […]

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What Can You Do to Build a Fully Sighted Organization?

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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 […]

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Alex Ramsey Challenges You: A Non-IQ Quiz on Logic for Leaders

    When asked to prove if something is true or false, people tend to focus on confirming “the rule” as stated, rather than falsifying it.  Humm that’s sort of a brain twister, isn’t it? As a result, even supposedly smart people can be quite illogical. That is, according to research psychologist Keith Stanovich, a prof […]

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A Powerful Personality Test

Dozens of psychological and personality tests provide insight, they insist, into how we think and act. They pronounce with authority that we do or don’t so this or that well. According to one highly regarded test, I’m “gifted” as an ” attorney, ski instructor, forester, geologist, carpenter, minister, physician, writer, architect, fine artist, musician, dentist, […]

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Revisiting Ike

Until yesterday, when I heard  David Eisenhower discuss his grandfather’s iconic 1961 farewell speech, I never fully grasped the full wisdom of President Dwight Eisenhower‘s words. David, in his new book Going Home to Glory, a memoir about life with his illustrious grandfather, puts the famous Military-Industrial Complex speech into a broader context, explaining why […]

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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 […]

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