I’ve been doing some form of this column for nearly 20 years (how can that be?!), but this one was probably the hardest one to write.  A few weeks ago, I had an article ready on the topic of creating a winning culture – building an elite team or organization that would be successful in [...]

If you don’t know it, I’m a diehard Chiefs fan.  I was born and raised in Kansas City, and I’m a third-generation season ticket holder (yes, while living 400 miles away in Minneapolis).  I was at both playoff games in Arrowhead last month (both of which required about three or four days to recover my [...]

Last week, we all learned the extent of cheating by the Houston Astros on their way to the 2017 World Series title.  If you haven’t heard, the team apparently used a video camera in center field to steal opposing teams’ signs and then would relay the information to a staff member in the locker room [...]

As 2019 winds down and we turn our sights to 2020 – a new decade already?! – many of us will begin setting personal, professional, and organizational goals.  However, research shows that up to 80% of New Year’s resolutions are broken, and that the average date of breaking resolutions is about January 20 (that’s why [...]

Quick trivia: from what movie does the line “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!” come?  No Internet – no cheating!  Anyone??  It comes from the 1976 movie, The Network.  Winner of four Academy Awards and with an all-star cast, The Network is a satirical film about a struggling [...]

Strategy requires making choices about the future. But here’s the problem: most humans (and therefore most organizations) are actually fairly bad at predicting the future!  (Remember the now infamous prediction by IBM that the worldwide market for PCs was about four?!)  Why?  Because, well, the future is uncertain!  There are numerous variables, each acting on [...]

Leadership matters.  It’s what separates the good organizations from the bad and the great organizations from the good.  Good leadership is critical for optimizing resources, maximizing employee engagement, aligning organizational activities, and achieving and sustaining high performance.  In fact, research shows that leadership is the number one driver of superior organizational outcomes.  Or, said another way: without good leadership, [...]

St. Paul, September 9, 2019 -- The need to improve your organization’s performance has perhaps never been greater: there are early signs that the economy is tightening; customers expect more; competent workers are scarce; and competition is intensifying in many industries.  But -- with the complexity of organizations -- where does one start?  How do [...]

So my wife and I refinanced our house earlier this summer (as I’m now fond of saying: “I liked our house so much, I purchased it three times!”) – the low rates were just too appealing and the last time we refinanced was 15 years ago, so we dropped the rate by about 2%.  At [...]

A Wall Street Journal article from a couple of years ago captured the challenges most organizations face in trying to be innovative.  Authors Drew Boyd (a former J&J executive and current professor at University of Cincinnati) and Jacob Goldenberg (a professor at Hebrew and Columbia University and author of “Inside the Box: A Proven of [...]