We are not good at managing ourselves   Though we are more connected than ever, we are also more distracted and unfocused than ever.  We have numerous devices buzzing and ringing notifying us constantly throughout the day and night.  But the vast majority of these...

Boring, ineffective meetings are the bane of the vast majority of executive’s lives.  It is confounding why otherwise highly functioning and intelligent individuals, when gathered for a team meeting, become highly ineffective.   At the heart of great meetings is truly...

Part way during facilitating a full day session with a client the meeting went from great to tense really fast.  Some of the team’s deep-seated dysfunctional ways of operating came to a head.  The vibe in the room tanked.  People didn’t want to be there.  Tensions and...

In our personal and professional lives good is the enemy of great.  We let good things crowd out great things.  We settle for good, and forego great. Many of the entrepreneurial leadership teams I work with are initially in this category of settling for ‘good’ results...

The journey begins with the owners of a growth-oriented entrepreneurial company acknowledging they are not happy with the status quo. They recognize what has gotten them here is not going to get them there, and decide they are going to run their business on the...

Crucial Conversations are discussions between two or more people where the stakes are high, opinions vary, and emotions run strong (see the book “Crucial Conversations” by Patterson and Grenny).   Conversations around behavior and performance are the most crucial of...

Employee Engagement is a measure of how passionately employees feel about their jobs and workplaces.  With over 20 years of extensive research on Employee Engagement the Gallup organization states that “A highly engaged workforce means the difference between a company...

Southwest Airlines is by far the most successful commercial airline in US history.  But Southwest’s beginnings can be traced back to this simple napkin drawing:   Legend has it that in 1967, after shuttering Wild Goose Airlines, Rollin King turned to his attorney,...

One of the tensions entrepreneurial companies have to manage is the transition from scrappy informal startup to a more mature organization that can grow and scale with formal structure, processes and systems.  Entrepreneurs rightly fear that their organization may...