A couple weeks ago I fulfilled a 6-year goal of completing the Marathon Grand Slam, which involves running a marathon on all seven continents and at the North Pole. Pursuit of this goal has played a central role in my life and been a critical element of my professional and personal decisions since 2010. The […]

Are your employees afraid to make mistakes? A student once talked to me about feeling overwhelmed by a project I had assigned them. He told me he was unable to sleep the night after getting it, and he used the word “fear” four times in the conversation. There is absolutely no reason at all that […]

The people you know can push you forward. They can also hold you back. When the time comes, you may need to cut some ties in order to innovate, and be able to lead your employees to do the same. Frans Johansson wrote in The Medici Effect about the importance of breaking away from your […]

The last thing you want in a your organization is to be so tied to policies and practices that you never do anything new. It helps to be flexible and allow your employees the freedom they need so they can do what helps them do their job best, which may not be the same for […]

We recently led a conversation for some folks at a tech startup, and questions came up about creativity vs innovation. Very often these words are used interchangeably, but they really are different things, and both are important for your organization. Let me point out, though, that these are OUR definitions, based on readings we have […]