Mandela's quote on hidden greatness

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.

We ask ourselves, Who

Is It Possible To Shed Your Deepest Fears?

Look carefully into the future, and you will clearly see what’s there: Nothing! Even if you look at tomorrow, the future is empty waiting to be filled. Oftentimes though, you and I immerse the future with our past. Tomorrow therefore, appears no different than yesterday. Hence, the sayings like: same thing different day. 

If you cleaned up your past to give you the freedom to enter tomorrow with nothing, what would you be able to

Should You Hire an Executive Coach?

While not everyone is interested in becoming CEO, career growth is important. In fact, many large organizations have their own training and development curriculums. These programs enable people to become better problem solvers, managers, and project managers.

Oftentimes however, company training lacks crucial

Quote: Rudyard Kipling Says Great Leaders Are Like Alpha Wolves

“For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.” – Rudyard Kipling

Titans throughout understand this concept. Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, John D. Rockefeller, Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates. Each of them surrounded himself with effective and powerful people. Without their companions, they would be nothing.

Rockefeller once hired

Do You Have It All Backwards?

As people, we strive for success, whether it be through career, lifestyle, relationships, etc. We claim that once we have the right job, spouse, car, clothes, etc., we will be able to do the things we really want, and eventually become the person we’ve always wanted to be. This strategy however, is not only backwards looking: it will require more years than most will ever live to accomplish it.

Instead, consider the phrase “Be, Do, Have.” Before anything, decide whom you want to be known as: Successful? Trustworthy? Responsible? Kind? Only then will you be able to focus your

Quote: How Do You Gain Wisdom?

A smart man makes a mistake, learns from it, and never makes that mistake again. But a wise man finds a smart man and learns from him how to avoid the mistake altogether. – Roy Williams

What a concept. It’s great when the wise seek advice from the intelligent. Unfortunately, most of us today believe we have nothing in common with the past generation.

Back in the day, youths gathered around the elders to gain insight and knowledge. Now however, many younger people pontificate

Quote from Andrew Carnegie on: Devoting 100% of your capabilities

1835-1919

The average person puts only 25% of his energy and ability into his work. The world takes off its hat to those who put in more than 50% of their capacity, and stands on its head for those few and far between souls who devote 100%. – Andrew Carnegie

To be 100% devoted requires more than finishing everything on a to do list. True, these lists can be loaded. For some though, it may be nothing more than “busy work”. Without 100% of your effort, it could build nothing more than a reputation for looking good.

Those truly devoted will do whatever it takes to fulfill their goal. Before action is taken however, it must be preceded by

Is Microsoft a Death Waiting To Happen?

Has Microsoft Become a Dinosaur?

In the August edition of a Vanity Fair article, it describes how Microsoft has implemented a poisonous management strategy. The author of the article, Kurt Eichenwald, interviewed many current and former employees of Microsoft. Everyone he interviewed commented on a management system called “stack ranking” being destructive to Microsoft’s ability to innovate.

Stack ranking requires every business unit to

What Kind of Determination Do You Have?

“An invincible determination can accomplish almost anything and in this lies the great distinction between great men and little men.”

 Dr. Thomas Fuller  (1608-1661); Clergyman, Writer

Determination is the dedication to purpose, will, or intention. Thomas Edison made 10,000 attempts to make a functional light bulb. Though many considered his persistence ludicrous, if he had quit after the 10,000^th endeavor, we would be living in a different world today. 

While Edison possessed invincible determination, he did not

Are You Really a Great Listener?

What Makes Great Listeners?

In a Harvard Business Review article, Ram Charan wrote a piece called The Discipline of Listening. In the article, he provided effective techniques to ensure good listening and emphasized the cost of being unaware. What he left out though, was the source of poor listening.

We are taught to make eye contact with the person speaking to us. We are even taught to lean towards the speaker to assure them we are listening. Nonetheless, when there are two people in a conversation, there are at least

Quote From the Budda On How We Create the World

"We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world." – Buddha

If who we are reflects what we think, what influences our thoughts? If our environment shapes what we think and what we call reality, we are a product of our thoughts that were shaped by that environment. Therefore, if we were raised in a different environment, we would not be the same people today.

If that’s true, people have very little to do with how they think and who they are. Thus, the limitations in each person’s life are directly related to the environment in which he/she developed.

Nonetheless, these restrictions are not

What Separates Great Decision Makers From Poor Ones?

How To Become a More Effective Decision Maker

In today’s competitive job market, you need to distinguish yourself from others. When you add the information overload from the Internet, effective decision-making becomes a huge asset to your list of competencies.

Whether you are a corporate executive, an entrepreneur, or an employee, the ability to make great decisions will make you stand out as a valuable resource. When many businesses have the option to outsource, it becomes important to realize that you are always competing for your job with people around the world. Outsourcing however, cannot replace leaders, innovators, and effective decision makers.

There are many ways to make better decisions, this article will focus on four. The first is to become an

Quote: Thomas Fuller, M.D. on Wisdom

“Wisdom rises upon the ruins of folly.” – Thomas Fuller, M.D.

Folly is defined as thoughtlessness, recklessness, thoughtless, or reckless behavior. It is also synonymous with foolishness. Wisdom, however, is less about recklessness and more about clarity of what we really want from life.

Without understanding that, there are no

What The World Needs Now...

Dionne Warwick said “What the world needs now is love, sweet love.” For sure, we could never have enough of that. Perhaps that is what we need first. However, without responsibility, we could have the 1960s again. In that era, there was lots of loving without responsibility. Thus, what the world needs now is a new relationship to responsibility.

To help people better understand responsibility, I have outlined possibilities for a world from my perspective. It is a perspective that is neither right nor wrong. It is a world where we are responsible for what we think, say, and how we engage one another.

What the world needs now is a

What We Learn Can Create Disorder

1895-1986

"When we stop learning and merely act from the knowledge we have accumulated, disorder comes." -- Jiddu Krishnamurti

Since we never stop learning, we can choose to learn from the new or the old. We often draw from past experience to ascertain occurrences in the present. In no way is it wrong. At the same time, it has limits and we should not be restricted to using the past to understand the future. If we do, it is a sure way to repeat the past.

From the quote, the disorder that ensues is a result of doing

Make It Up From Nothing

When I say make it up from nothing, I do not mean to do things in a willy-nilly sort of way. To what I am referring is a state of mind or a place to think from. In fact, I am asserting that there is a good chance that most inventions that have had a profound impact on civilization have been created from nothing. The thought is that if you have nothing, you can create anything. If you have something, you will use what you have as a starting point. You will then be constrained by what you have. The challenge is getting to nothing. 

To get to nothing, I am suggesting that you have to think nothing. That means

Margaret Wheatley On Creativity

“The things we fear most in organizations—fluctuations, disturbances, imbalances—are the primary source of creativity.” — Margaret J. Wheatley

From her quote, Margaret Wheatley understood abstract thinking. For the fluctuations, disturbances and imbalances induce ingenuity.

According to Wheatley, creativity will come from the very challenges

The Innovator's Dilemma

When most people think of abstract conversations, they categorize it as mental masturbation. This is unfortunate because abstract conversations are the source of innovation.

You may say that I am making a bold statement. Or you may be saying to yourself that there are many ways to innovate. Innovation is not maintaining. While it includes improvement, most of us think of innovative people and companies as those that create something that did not exist before. So what do abstract conversations have to do with inventing?

If you think about every invention, the primary source of the invention first existed as

What Hidden Treasure Do You Possess?

“I was a hidden treasure, and I longed to be known.” – Unknown

This is clearly one of the paradoxes of being human. We all have untapped potential. However, we also have an unspoken fear. We fear that one day we may perform

What Does It Take to Become the Leader’s Leader?

Whether advising on board of directors, directing as Chairman of the Board, or serving as CEO, these administrators are unmistakably leaders. Nevertheless, they do not have all the answers. The best leaders request guidance for the tough decisions. That is, they continuously seek out other leaders in whom they can confide.

To be a confidant to the leader, it is important to have been a leader. In many cases, some of the best confidants are people who

Raising Your Ambitions

"It is a paradoxical but profoundly true and important principle of life that the most likely way to reach a goal is to be aiming not at that goal itself, but at some more ambitious goal beyond it." – Arnold Toynbee

This comes down to how you see yourself. It is said that when the children of the Kennedy family were young, they would go out and play after church. Each child wore a hat. If they came home without their hat, they would be punished by their parents. So they decided to play a game that required them to put their butts on the line.

Every Sunday they would find a wall and throw their hats over the wall. No matter what it took each child had to get over the wall to get their hat. Each Sunday they threw their hats over taller walls.  And each Sunday they came home with their hats. 

Perhaps all the while the goal was to go over the tallest wall. However, they had not developed the skill and teamwork to achieve it. Therefore, they practiced on lower walls until they developed the ability to conquer the tallest.

If we look at the Kennedy family, it would seem that scaling walls gave them the mental preparedness for much greater achievements. Imagine if you would, that their goals were never about retrieving hats on the other side of the wall. Imagine that their childhood games were always part of a bigger plan that became the Kennedy legacy.

They had always seen themselves as accomplishing greatness and overcoming obstacles became part of their playground instead of something to avoid. To do that, you have to see yourself as already there. You just have to be responsible for the mental and physical (skills) preparation.     

The Unwritten Rules of Best Buy's Corporate Culture

In March of this year, Best Buy CEO, Brian Dunn, told 400 employees to say good-bye to their jobs and closed 50 stores. In April, Dunn said good-bye to Best Buy after an investigation by the board. He was having a relationship with a female employee, an act that was against company policy.

Later, the board learned that Chairman and founder, Richard Schulze, knew about Dunn’s relationship and never reported it to the audit committee. The board subsequently asked Schulze to step down as Chairman of the Board.

From the board’s perspective, Dunn showed very poor judgment by having a relationship against company policy. Therefore, his only choice was to resign. During the time leading up to this, Best Buy missed its revenue targets for the 4th quarter of 2011. The concern was that Dunn might have made other poor decisions that affected the corporation’s performance.

Both Dunn and Schulze’s behavior raise an issue of policy. While every business has written policies, it also has unspoken policies, practiced without conscious effort. Dunn created an unspoken policy: relationships with coworkers are acceptable as long as no one knows.

On the surface, there seems to be no big deal in having a relationship with an employee. Except, the company’s written policy prohibited and acting otherwise undermined the culture of the organization, undercutting the company’s success. For Dunn, this resulted in Best Buy trudging through a revenue lapse.

Since he was breaking company policy, it may have made it very difficult for him to enforce policies in general. It’s like your parents saying don’t smoke as they take another puff from their cigarette. Whatever the leader does, his subordinates will follow.

I wouldn’t be surprised if it lowered people’s tolerance for mistakes on Best Buy's part. Take the Best out of Best Buy they would be goodbye. Undoubtedly the new CEO will have to correct these problems immediately

It is always easy to know what to do after the fact. However, I would like to know what you would have done if you were in either position.

What do you think? I would love to hear what you think. 

Killing Trust

"Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly, and they will show themselves great." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every organization needs trust. Without it, people can feel invalidated and become resentful.

From a counterintuitive perspective, trust is always accompanied by mistrust. They come in pairs whether you like it or not. Therefore, if you want to eliminate mistrust, you will have to kill trust. If there is no dependency on trust, people will have to relate to one another as their commitments. By killing trust, people are honored as their word and their actions are always a direct correlate of their words.

As for greatness, I lost both my parents when I was 21. As the oldest of 4 children, I was committed that what was left of the family continued to move forward in a powerful way. One of the ways I did that was to treat my brother and sisters, whose ages were 19, 16 and 12, as though they were truly great. Without question, they accomplished things that you would never expect from someone their age, even though I asked them to do tasks that they had no idea how to do.

While my expectations were for greatness, I guided them through many endeavors until they were successful. This built confidence and allowed me to delegate increasingly complicated tasks to them each passing day. Whether they succeeded or failed in the beginning was irrelevant. It was more important that I was committed to their greatness and took the time to develop it.

As Mr. Emerson states, developing greatness in people will always outperform trust.     

Who’s The Most Important Person In Your Life?

Of Course, the first answer is you. You get one life and you own it. It’s your future. And you get to say what it will be. After you, who do you see as most important? If it is not your spouse or significant other, how do you expect to experience the joy and success life has to offer? 

The Company You Keep

"The best mirror is a friend's eye." – Gaelic Proverb

Everyone knows that your closest friend can tell you things about yourself that you may find difficult to see. True friends will be honest with you and tell you how some of your behavior harms your chances for success in love, family and business.

However, there are other things a friend can tell you without ever saying a word. Look at your closest friends. What is the condition of their lives? Are they happy with where they are in life? Are they successful? Do they struggle financially? Do they gossip about other people’s faults instead of taking deliberate actions to improve themselves?

There are many more questions you can ask about your closest friends. If your friends are unsatisfied with the condition of their lives and struggle financially, get ready. You are headed for the same.

If you understand your friends’ view of life, you understand that they are close to you because you most likely share similar views. If you do not like what you see, find new friends to mirror.

On the other hand, if you have friends that stretch your imagination and expose you to new and exciting events and perspectives, you are on a great path. That is, if your friends hold a powerful vision for their future and are comfortable financially, know that you are most likely on the same path.

In the end, regardless of who your friends are, strive to be a valuable contributor. You can be the catalyst for moving your friends in a new and empowering direction. 

Granted, if they want to stay in their unhappy comfort zone, you have a very tough choice to make. Are you bold enough to stand up for your future?