You can be successful externally and still deeply dissatisfied. To be satisfied in your work, you must posses three components.

Some leaders believe that customers are their most important priority. Others believe their boss, their board, or their investors are their most important priority. I’ve worked in companies where these philosophies were the cultural norm. But I don’t agree with them. I believe your teammates are your most important priority. If you take care of […]

The “law of replication” says that like begets like. This applies especially to leadership. Like it or not, you will replicate yourself. Your followers will adopt your behaviors, habits, and mannerisms.

Vision and strategy are both important. But there is a priority to them. Vision always comes first. Always. If you have a clear vision, you will eventually attract the right strategy.

Have you had this experience? You’re traveling in a new city, using your GPS to find your destination. But the route doesn’t seem to match reality. Suddenly, you’re in a strange place with cars buzzing by and no clarity about where to turn next. How do you get where you want to go? Maybe you’re unsure […]

The turn of the year is always a good time to evaluate what’s working in our lives, what’s not, and make any changes that will start us down a better path. As we pause and reflect on where we’ve been and where we want to go, we normally have a sense of what to do. […]

Pollsters say reading is in decline. As an author and former publishing executive, the statistics make me wince. But I’m optimistic for another reason. Why? A readership crisis is really a leadership crisis. And for people who know how to respond, crisis is just another way of saying opportunity.

Sometimes it’s hard to see something, even when you’re looking right at it. That’s partly because of the way our brains work, according to psychology professor Wendy Wood. “Our minds are designed to miss the forest for the trees,” she says in her book, Good Habits, Bad Habits “We are primed by cues [stimuli in our […]

To lead others, you need a compelling vision. But lofty words are not enough. A vision statement must draw a crystal-clear picture of the future that guides action. In 2000, I took over Nelson Books, a major division of Thomas Nelson. I quickly discovered that it was the least profitable of the fourteen units in […]

Recently I had an idea for one of my coaching clients. It was a fundamental change to her business model that I knew would 10x her business and provide her with more personal margin to focus on her health and most important relationships. As we talked, she got excited about the possibilities. But almost immediately, […]