Marketing. The very word has the potential to send shivers down the spine. Most of us just want to do whatever it is we do, not spend our lives telling people about it. And yes, I’m saying this despite the reality of social media, which is almost exclusively people telling other people about the stuff…
Since the title of this article is slightly ambiguous, let me elaborate. If your question is, “What’s the best way to win an argument – loud angry shouting, or calm reasoned discourse?” then I can answer that right now. Do the latter. Problem solved. But what we’re talking about here is the method by which…
So, the people you work with and employ could stand to improve in various ways. That fair, since it’s true about all of us. But talking to people about the mistakes they make or the ways they might improve is a delicate and often difficult task. So here we’re going to discuss how to provide…
Making important decisions, acting like a leader, being a person your colleagues can count on to get the job done – all of these are qualities associated with “taking initiative.” So if there’s a lot of extra initiative lying around, odds are you’d like to take some of it for yourself. Doing so, however, can…
You’ve certainly heard people talk about ethics before. Companies everywhere talk about doing business in an ethical manner, and you probably don’t want to spend a lot of time with wildly unethical people. Now obviously, what constitutes “ethical” can differ significantly from one person to the next, so finding a solid definition of ethics is…
In the past two decades I’ve delivered well over a thousand presentations, mostly live but also increasingly virtual as well (thanks, pandemic!). I’ve spoken to six people and to six thousand, and I’ve been everywhere from theaters to factory floors. No matter where I am, it’s fairly common for someone to ask me when I…
I’m just coming off a very lovely few weeks with my family. We saw friends, went skiing, and spent 12 solid hours on Christmas day together in the living room playing with new toys and games. It has been great. And it has also been educational. Because sometime during all this family-ness I realized that…
As 2022 draws to a close, there are two issues that seem to have completely dominated the year – supply chain, and labor shortage. Those have been the two key drivers at pretty much every conference I have attended this year. Fixing the supply chain is beyond my ability. But dealing with our persistent labor…
At its most basic, effective leadership consists of two key components. One of them is the human element – that’s the part where you’re showing and telling the people who work for you that you’re glad they’re there. This is the piece of leadership that gets the most attention, because there are an endless number…
One of the things I’ve always enjoyed about my job is the opportunity to meet people living in places I would otherwise probably never go, doing things I know almost nothing about. It’s given me a chance to see a much broader cross-section of the world than I think most jobs allow for, and my…