Have you every wondered about certain individuals or organizations who have achieved huge success, only to lose it and fade into obscurity within a number of years? What happened to them? Was it bad luck or unfortunate timing? Was their initial success a fluke? Did they suddenly just lose their edge? There’s no one-size-fits-all answer …
In his book Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, Greg McKeown writes: “Essentialism is not about how to get more things done; it’s about how to get the right things done. It doesn’t mean just doing less for the sake of less either. It is about making the wisest possible investment of your time and energy in order …
In our day of massive information overload—24/7 everything, everywhere, all the time—it becomes increasingly difficult for leaders and all team members to focus on the truly vital and what is most important. In chapter one of Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, author Greg McKeown tells the story of an executive facing this very situation. But …
Continuing our study of Greg McKeown’s book, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, this week we look at a crucial and liberating leadership question. How many leaders and organizations teach, coach, and explicitly empower ALL of their team members to ask and act on the following question? “Is this the most important thing I should be doing with …
We see it among less successful leaders in every industry and in every walk of life. Millions of leaders, and literally billions of people spend their entire lives, and their entire career ‘majoring in minor activities.’ I have been a formal and informal leader in the healthcare industry, and in business in general, for over forty years. As a hospital …
I am currently studying—note that I did not say that I am simply reading—an excellent book titled Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less. The author is Greg McKeown. Regardless of your level of leadership and personal and professional success, you can learn and benefit from this book! From day to day, in fact more often than that, …
Jon Gordon, a successful leadership author, thought leader, and speaker, recently visited West Point Military Academy to speak and to interact with cadets, coaches, and the military brass. Following his visit, Jon wrote an article titled 9 Leadership Lessons from my Visit to West Point. He explains that although he was there to teach, he ended …
I It was my honor recently to serve as facilitator for a day of important discussion among a group of 10 hospital and health system CEOs. Over the years, these CEOs have developed significant trust. They clearly understand the immense and enduring power of partnership, alignment, and working together for the greater success of all. …
I learn a lot by watching the people around me. I have long been a people-watcher, and I’ve discovered that not only do I learn something about each person I watch, but I also learn something about the people around them. And often, I even learn something about myself. Today as I walked laps around …
In his book The Little Book Of Talent: 52 Tips For Improving Your Skills, Daniel Coyle discusses ‘hard, high-precision skills’ versus ‘soft, high-flexibility skills.’ According to Coyle, hard, high-precision skills “have one path to an ideal result; skills that you could imagine being performed by a reliable robot.” Soft, high-flexibility skills “have many paths to a good …
Tip number six in Daniel Coyle’s book, The Little Book of Talent, is “Choose Spartan Over Luxurious.” Coyle correctly explains that we love comfort—state-of-the-art practice facilities, oak-paneled corner offices, expensive fluffy towels, and all kinds of other luxurious creature comforts and statements of status. Coyle asserts that “luxury is a motivational narcotic: It signals our unconscious minds to give …
As a leader, your job, your responsibility, your priority is not to manage nor accept the status quo. Your job, your responsibility, your priority is to personally exemplify continuous improvement and to create and maintain a culture that encourages and supports continuous improvement. That means a culture that encourages, accepts, supports and learns from mistakes. In the chapter …
A couple of years out of high school, I had a job that I absolutely hated. The environment was everything a personal, professional, and organizational development and growth environment should not be! I did not stay long, but long enough to never, ever forget the terrible, degrading, negative-driven environment in which I worked. Even though I absolutely …
I love penetrating, thought-provoking, high-impact quotations. I constantly look for them, save them, and share them via my websites, articles, books, and presentations. In my opinion, it is hard to find a more penetrating, thought-provoking, high-impact quotation than this one attributed to Aristotle: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, …
Many people want—even crave—to be leaders so that they can and will have “power over people.” Many leaders want to advance further up the leadership chain of command so that they will have ever-increasing power over people. Power, particularly perceived power over people, is very addictive. For many leaders, their addiction to perceived power over …
In the book titled Difference: The One-Page Method for Reimagining Your Business and Reinventing Your Marketing, author Bernadette Jiwa focuses on thinking differently and being a ‘difference thinker’ in order to create totally new programs, products and services. Much of what she writes is also directly applicable to leadership excellence. Consider these statements, found in the …
In the midst of significant change throughout America’s healthcare system, I can think of no better time to read and study the recently published book by Bernadette Jiwa titled Difference: The One-Page Method for Reimagining Your Business and Reinventing Your Marketing. Seth Godin, the world-class marketing guru, author, speaker, and blogger wrote the following about this …
As part of the research for my next book, titled Be An Inspirational Leader: Engage, Inspire, Empower, I am interviewing highly successful inspirational leaders from all across America. Following each interview, I contact several colleagues of the person interviewed and ask for additional perspectives regarding the leadership of the individual I interviewed. The response has been …
As a leader, you’re expected to have the answers. Whether the questions are coming from customers, clients, competitors, employees, or the media, it’s important to be equipped with the right answer at the right time. But there is something even more important for leaders than having the right answers. Michael Hyatt recently addressed this topic …
People, including current and future leaders, who truly want to grow, achieve greater success, and become better leaders, spend significant time closely observing and learning from the top performers. In the book The Little Book of Talent, Daniel Coyle writes: “We each live with a ‘windshield’ of people in front of us; one of the keys …