Because the previous post came across a little darker than I had intended and needed some balance: Many of the most effective people I’ve worked with are masters at what I have heard called ”the discipline of gratitude.” I like the way this is phrased because it makes gratitude out to be what it really is — [...]
One of the hardest lessons to learn (for me at least) is tempo. Given the economic climate and given the difficulties that lie ahead, here’s one piece of advice I’m giving a lot more these days: Don’t sprint in a marathon. We’re at mile x and x is probably less than 10. The race is [...]
We are always of two minds on a subject. More precisely, our brain has evolved in such a way as to have a very limited but extremely flexible power of conscious judgment and a very powerful but rigid set of non-conscious habitual behaviors we bring to a situation. Consciousness is wise but severely constrained, habits are only [...]
Sometimes it helps to visualize something. While James Clerk Maxwell formalized the equations describing electromagnetism, for example, it was the English scientists Michael Faraday, with vastly inferior mathematical ability, who developed the best experiments. Why? Because Faraday had a picture in his head of what electromagnetism was. He saw them as “tubes of force” and, thus, developed [...]
A friend of mine (h/t SF) sent me a link to the FAA recordings and transcripts of the US Air flight that ditched successfully in the Hudson River last month. They are amazing. In interviews after the events, the pilot downplayed his own heroism, his own courage in what were some of the most harrowing circumstances [...]
I’ve seen tremendous acts of courage and decency in the last few months. Difficult times make me remember that people can rise to almost any occasion. They are at their best when their friends, when their colleagues, when their families need them to be at their best. It seems worth asking, then, what is your [...]
One step further from reversing my previous curse on Tim Wong (which had the unfortunate impact of stopping the fan on his laptop, melting it into a slag of unusable metal in very short order — my bad,– powerful magic) I hereby anti-curse Tim (I’d say bless but I _really_ lack the mandate for that [...]
One of the things I’m seeing in clients right now is a subtle shift in the things they are looking to reward in leaders. The shift can be summed up in a simple phrase: “we’re looking for leaders who play mean D.” By D, of course, I mean “defence,” and what’s interesting is the extent [...]
Ok, so, I know that the title of this blog is reading about leading, but in our current day and age, perhaps it should be called multi-media about leading (not quite as catchy, huh?). I was thinking over the weekend about the five movies I would recommend to understand something important about being an effecitive [...]
Here are some articles I’ve been reading over the rainy weekend (an anomaly here in sunny San Diego County) The Importance of Stupidity in Scientific Research – why its not only OK to feel stupid sometimes, it’s essential. The Importance of Three Theories – How to hold off on jumping to conclusions. Blackouts and Cascading Failures of the [...]
