I once worked with a CEO who loved to micromanage. He was incredibly sharp and could often arrive at the right answer faster than anyone else. His micromanagement was simply a way of moving things along faster. He told me he did it because “it helped move things along and no one wants to be …
I’m sitting in Boston airport waiting for my flight back to Vancouver, pondering if technology has become a crutch for organizations. I came down to speak at a conference on data and my talk was focused on how to generate more insights. The overall conference is heavily focused on tools so you have lots of …
In the latest shareholder letter, Warren Buffet attributed his success to a “handful of decisions” over his entire career. It wasn’t about getting thousands of decisions right but only a few. It’s a powerful idea that goes against everything we are told about decisions. Even in my second book, Bulletproof Decisions, I started with the …
Last month I wrote a short article on how organizations can gauge if they are actually doing innovative work or simply talking about it. The article has been generating some great discussions on Linkedin and other platforms. Innovation is one of those ideas that doesn’t need a pitch deck. It is obvious. That doesn’t mean …
I remember what it was like to leave a message for my Mom on her beeper before cell phones became mainstream. You would call a service where someone would transcribe your message. They would then send it electronically to the beeper of your choosing. There was a character limit (the original Twitter?) but the messages …
Ambitious individuals (Type A for my scientific-inclined readers) love feedback. They want as much as possible because they have a belief that all feedback will help them. In fact, organizations often lose some of the most high potential employees because they don’t receive enough feedback, especially the constructive kind. However, not all feedback is equal …