Triggered: I admit it. I get triggered over this topic of selling. This site has several posts on how I believe technology and values have, and are, changing around the discipline of “selling.” And just for the record, I spent many years in B2B technical sales as well as marketing. I didn’t feel I was being evil back then. To …
Quotation Well, I’ve heard it stated many different ways. What I grew up with was the quote, “Practice what you preach.” Then, I’ve been given to believe that Charles Murray states it as, “Do not preach what you do not practice.” The same message though. Leaders must be authentic, do as they request others to do, and live their values. …
Three Parallel Universes: I’m speaking of Organizations (including businesses), Personal Lives, and the Public Square. There seem to be many parallels in those three universes. Of course, this should not be surprising since each comprises individuals from the subspecies Homo sapiens sapiens. Public Square Now, I have no intention of turning this into a political post, so let me get …
Words to Live By I had the privilege of spending part of my youth in the Boy Scouts of America (way back before all the controversies surrounding that organization). I can still “rattle off” the Scout Law, Motto, and Oath. They were committed to memory as well as spoken out loud very frequently. I learned some beneficial things – how …
The Six Ts The issue of trust in organizations came up several times during the last two months (of the previous year). I am working with a couple of new executives. And so we had not been through the conversation at that point. And I was reminded of this again when I saw a list of the “Six T’s” by …
Puzzle Eons ago, when I was in engineering school, we had an exercise known as “The Black Box.” The idea is simple; the challenge wasn’t always so simple. Inside the box, hidden from our view, was an electronic circuit. There were two variations, a paper exercise where the instructor gave us the input and outputwaveforms, and we had to derive …
I am grateful that I had Chapman’s book “on the shelf” (in the electronic reader) to read. I had just finished Jeffrey Pfeffer’s book, Leadership BS, and was pretty down based on what I had read. What a delight and contrast, to pick up Chapman’s and Sisodia’s book. It has renewed my faith in human nature. In this well-written book, …
In his TED Talk Paul Tudor Jones II said: “… we as a society have come to view our companies and corporations in a very narrow, almost monomaniacal fashion with regard to how we value them, and we have put so much emphasis on profits, on short-term quarterly earnings and share prices, at the exclusion of all else. It’s like …
In a recent Wall St. Journal podcast, the reporter was explaining how difficult it is to understand traffic flow. The engineers who study traffic patterns explain that the impatient drivers who change lanes frequently, wait to the last minute to get in or out of an exit or carpool lane and who insist on not leaving room for others cause …
Many colleagues and authors are writing about the global Leadership crisis. Some of that feeling — that we have a lack of leadership — comes from highly visible lapses in ethical conduct. “Ethics is knowing the difference between what you have the right to do and what is the right thing to do.” Potter Stewart, Associate Chief Justice U. S. Supreme Court. …