What I Learned from Thomas Edison's Quote on Life's Failures

“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up” – Thomas Edison

There’s a difference between wanting something and being committed to something. Whether it’s an intimate relationship, project or a career path, the testament to your commitment arises when things are not going the way you hoped. At that point, you have a choice: 1. You commit to

How Do You Build Change into Your Organization’s Culture?

The complexity of the global marketplace and technology forces everyone to change practices or behaviors every few months. At the same time, we are indirectly trained to resist. Throughout our lives, we have been told how difficult it is for people to change. If you tell someone something enough times, even if it is a lie, they begin to believe it.

However, if you look at our lives from another perspective, you will see that we are designed to constantly change. Change is built into our lifestyles. In the simplest form, we change our

Can International Travel Help You Master Change?

When driving breakthrough initiatives in an organization, culture change has to be built into the strategy. While culture is considered a soft skill, it is one to the most difficult initiatives to orchestrate. As a rule, people tend to hold on to old ways. To gain deeper insight into this issue, I used international travel to simulate culture change.

From 1996-1999, I lived in 8 Latin American countries – Belize, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama and El Salvador. During my travels, I experienced change in every sense. My stay in each country ranged 2 days to 20 months. I lived in the jungle and the city. And I encountered

What Could We Learn from the Author of Winnie the Pooh?

“The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. The second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. The first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking.” — Alan A. Milne

In a world of political correctness, we dare not say anything that the majority will not say. From birth, we are taught to keep the peace and fit in or otherwise face our greatest

What I Learned from Lao Tze About Destiny

What I Learned from Lao Tze about Destiny

“Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.”  ~ Lao-Tze

For more than 2,000 years, the wisest people have taught us that our thoughts create things. Those things become our reality. Our reality becomes our everyday destiny. On one hand, it is true we are taught to believe in

3 Things Very Successful People Do Really Well

While there are many ways to master your craft, there are three methods that are common to all successful people.

They Take Risks – Those who master anything understand that life is like riding a bicycle. Most people can get on a bike and ride. However, the stunts you have to perform to compete in the X Games would be too risky for the majority of people. Every stunt has the possibility of injury. Yet, the competitors in the X Games make it look simple and elegant. The winner is usually the person who successfully completes the most difficult moves. 

In life, if you stay on the

Muhammad Ali's Quote Teaches About Our Own Greatness

I am the greatest, I said that even before I knew I was. – Muhammad Ali

Most people need proof before they can make bold declarations like Muhammad Ali did. He had no proof he was the greatest. Yet, he stood for it as a possibility. That declaration shaped the way he

Did You Choose to Live the Life You Live?

"I am looking for a lot of men who have an infinite capacity to not know what can't be done."  Henry Ford

At the age of 15, Henry Ford dropped out of school to help on his father’s farm. While he had very little education, he was curious and he educated himself on the functions of machines. Eventually his tinkering with watches and other machines earned him

Do You Agree with Deming's Quote on Discovering New Things?

"If you do not know how to ask the right question, you discover nothing." - W. Edwards Deming

In the US, from childhood, we are rewarded for giving the right answer. Giving the right answer has become synonymous with high intelligence. Those who prefer to ask questions may be seen as

Why It’s Important To Be Able To Say 'No' To the Boss

If you were the boss in a perfect world, everything you want done would be completed on time. In an imperfect world with only 24 hours and never-ending demands of clients, employees, legislators, bosses, etc., something will slip through the crack or be delayed. While it seems clear communication should fix it, it doesn’t. It’s straight communication without consequences that creates order out of chaos. 

In many organizations, unexpected delays come as no surprise. The culture of communication between the boss and subordinates is set up to

Dee Hock's Quote on How Leaders Lead

"Control is not leadership; management is not leadership; leadership is leadership. If you seek to lead, invest at least 50% of your time in leading yourself—your own purpose, ethics, principles, motivation, conduct. Invest at least 20% leading those with authority over you and 15% leading your peers." — Dee Hock, Founder and CEO Emeritus, Visa

If you have ever read Dee Hock’s book One From Many, you would know that he was an amazing leader. His suggestion to spend 50% of your time leading yourself is valid. Why? At some point, most of us say and do things that are inimical to our success. Many poor decisions are derived from the inability to lead ones self and the desire to control others.

Managing yourself is not just making sure you align your thoughts and actions with your desires. You also have to constantly

How Do You Get Employees to Walk Through Fire for You?

Every manager’s dream is to lead people who will walk through fire for him or her. However, for many managers, this is not the case. Paradoxically, it is the manager who creates the dynamics of the relationship. Your people will follow your lead if you fight for them first.

As a manager gets to know his employees, he should first understand what they

Mario Andretti's Quote on High Performance

“If everything seems under control, you’re just not going fast enough.” – Mario Andretti

According to Andretti, the thing many people crave impedes progress. In a world where we are obsessed with making everything predictable and controllable, we miss the possibility of

Do You Believe Being Smart Is Enough?

We have all seen very successful people who didn’t appear to be very bright. Yet, when the window of opportunity opened up, they knew what to do. What do these people have that extremely intelligent people lack?

I know a number of people who have very high IQs. In fact, I know a gentleman who was classified as a genius at the age of four. When you speak to him, you know in less than five minutes that he is super smart. However, he appears to lack

The New Economic Reality: Do We Have the Courage to Create It?

In the US, organizations have 2 gears for running a business. During good times, hire people. When the economy slows, fire people. In almost every case, this strategy results in a downward spiral for the economy. While there are infinite alternatives to this tactic, no one has taken sufficient time to explore and develop it. At the same time, in the 21^st Century, change happens faster than ever. As a result, many of the existing economic structures have become obsolete. Therefore, the time is now to explore new possibilities.

If you think about it, there has to be a

John Buchan's Quote On the Task of Leadership

"The task of leadership is not to put greatness into humanity, but to elicit it, for the greatness is already there." — John Buchan

One of the biggest problems leaders or managers have is their impression of what kind of person you have to be as a leader. Too often, people have the false impression that leaders have to be

Peter Drucker Quotes on True Leadership

"Leadership is not magnetic personality, that can just as well be a glib tongue. It is not ‘making friends and influencing people,’ that is flattery. Leadership is lifting a person's vision to higher sights, the raising of a person's performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations." — Peter F. Drucker

More and more research shows that charismatic leaders do not run the most successful organizations. In Jim Collins’ book, Good To Great, he spent years following companies that consistently outperformed the S&P and their industry over the course of 15+ years. Of the very few that met the criteria,

Who Owns Your Brain?

The title may seem like a silly question. Most people will say they own their brain. However, before you respond, I ask you to consider something. This question is analogous to food companies. Coca Cola, for example, says they want to own 20% of your stomach. To do that, they produce soft drinks, snacks and other foods for you to consume. Their goal is to entice you to fill 20% of your stomach with their products. The remaining 80% is filled with Pillsbury, Kellogg, McDonalds, Perdue, etc.

While you may not like this idea, when you think about it, consumers are loyal to certain foods and a percentage of their stomach is committed to a specific brand. In some cases, people are enticed by too many brands and they fill their bellies to 200%. That is considered over eating.

So what has that to do with your brain? There are many

Jim Rohn Quotes On How to Make a Fortune

“Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.” – Jim Rohn

While school is important, it is finite. Education, on the other hand, is infinite. Hence, that is the difference between making a living and making a fortune.

At some point, formal school

Why Change Initiatives Need Changed Approaches

http://blogs.hbr.org/ashkenas/2013/04/change-management-needs-to-cha.html

The Harvard Business Review published an article by Ron Ashkenas called Change Management Needs Change. See link above. He said while change management has been around for over half a century, 60%-70% of change initiatives fail.  

In the article, he sites one of the key obstacles to successful change initiatives is

Nikola Tesla's Quote On Great Achievement

“All that was great in the past was ridiculed, condemned, combated, suppressed — only to emerge all the more powerfully, all the more triumphantly from the struggle.”

― Nikola Tesla

This is a philosophy of the game changer. And Nikola Tesla was a game changer. In the late 1800s, he advocated and experimented with wireless technology.  However, the scientific community said he was

Are You a Game Changer?

It could be said that Michael Jordan changed the game of basketball. Steve Jobs changed the game of cell phones. There are many more examples of game changers, like the Wright Brothers or Thomas Edison.

In the case of the Wright Brothers, they pursued a goal in the face of being ridiculed by the masses. After many, many attempts they continued until successful. Once they achieved their goal, the

Small Businesses Are No Longer the Super Heroes of the US Economy

From Presidents of the US to guru consultants, we hear the chants. It has been repeated ad nauseam that small businesses are the most important enterprises for the US economy. However, when you look at research from the National Centre for the Middle Market at Ohio State University, you see a very different picture of reality.

Ohio State University did an analysis of mid sized companies in the US. They measured them by gross annual revenue between $10 million-$1 billion. They estimate there are 197,000 enterprises that meet this criterion. You may say so what.

Of those 197,000 businesses, they make up

NYSE CEO Duncan Niederaurer Delivers Keynote at The Board of Veteran CEOs Breakfast Forum

Do You Know Your Transferable Skills?

The skills and competencies to produce extraordinary results are rarely acquired. Why? Most of the explanations given for outstanding performers revolve around luck or genetics. Therefore, very few people have a way to impart a method for reproducing extraordinary. However, sometimes when people are faced with devastating odds against them, somehow they accomplish results that are considered miraculous.  You hear stories of people lifting a car off of their child.  Those abilities are inexplicable.  No one has been able to teach how to transfer those incredible talents that happen in a spur of the moment into professional or personal abilities. 

Throughout history, there have been instances where groups of people have taken on those abilities to avail themselves of great achievement.   Yet, when the emergency is over, it becomes