Have you ever noticed that organizations are great at creating controls and policies to prevent incidents that have already happened? Once the proverbial cow escapes the barn, they adeptly make sure it won't happen again by, say, authorizing only certain people to man the exit and constructing barn-door status reports. read »
Ever since I took a class from Professor Robert Sutton, author of “The No Asshole Rule,” I've been thinking more carefully about the relationship between management style, workplace energy, and business performance. If the three topics are intimately linked, you might be able to predict future results by assessing a team's current mindset. I'm convinced that Mindset Matters, so I recommend that everyone consider the simple question ‘Do people feel more or less energized after talking to you?' read »
Adobe chief executive Shantanu Narayen is by nature mild-mannered. Yet he was at the center of a fire-storm last spring, when Steve Jobs publicly took on Adobe's media platform (and ubiquitous video player) Flash -- and why he won't allow it on the iPhone and iPad. read »
Every now and then, situations arise among people in business that make me feel they’ve forgotten what they’re there for: read »
If you want your message remembered, you must convey it personally. How many emails do you simply glance at? How many proposals do you gloss over? I encourage you to pick up a proposal, contract, report or other document from two to six weeks ago and re-read it. I bet there is something in there that you forgot. read »
colas Berggruen, the homeless billionaire who sold off his residences in Manhattan and Miami in 2000, jetted into Switzerland yesterday for the World Economic Forum. read »
In an Orwellian twist of Obama rhetoric, the president tells Americans that we must keep spending because “Spending is investment.” Or at least that’s my take from the State of the Union speech. Spending is NOT investment when there is no return, and no prospect of payback, ever. More important, spending MUST be stopped, when the bank account is dry. What part of that statement does our Harvard-educated president not understand? read »
E-mail changed the way we communicate. Now, the way we communicate may be changing e-mail. read »
At the World Economic Forum in Davos I sat down with Accenture's former CEO and current Chairman, Bill Green. He's been in his new role as sole Chairman of the US$21.6 billion global consulting company for six weeks now, and currently he's going through what he affectionately refers to as "the withdrawal phase" from no longer working as CEO. Green joined the firm in 1977 and rose to partner in 1986. He served as CEO from September 2004 to December of last year and took the additional responsibility[...] read »