“To start a business, the CEO must be everything.  To grow a business

Radically shifting markets, a plethora of price challenging products, ever changing technology, and the unrelenting hand of time are making the aging owners of small to mid size businesses (SMBs) vulnerable. For many of them, this is a new and uncomfortable mindset. Fiercely independent, hard working, and resilient, the majority of SMB owners  have...

At the center of every organization is the collection of ideas, beliefs

, and cultural traits (collective habits).  Regardless of whether they were put there deliberately or whether anyone is conscious of their presence, habits do exist.  These beliefs powerfully but subtly impact the performance of every employee.   If a deliberate choice is not...

Successful organizations, like hurricanes, have a central core around

which everything revolves and toward which everything is focused. At the center are values (what the organization believes in) and vision (where the organization is going). Business plans and the hierarchy of organization charts make no sense in the “I” where the generation...

To survive and prosper in what is being referred to as the “shift

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Your grandparents did not work for organizations like the one you work

Everyone and everything is moving all the time. As companies jockey for position, mergers and acquisitions become the fastest way to secure temporary security and grow market share. ‘Job security’ has come to mean moving rapidly from one company to another. My oldest son, who plays lead guitar in his rock band, told me, ‘Dad, no one...

What qualifies an executive coach who authors business books and blog

My vision for this series of postings is to encourage effective leadership at home—help parents transform themselves and their children into vibrant “humans becoming”, rather than stagnant “humans being”, or worse yet,  mind-numbed “humans doing”. The secret to a fulfilled life at home, work, or out in the community...

Today’s workplace doesn’t look like it did just a few years

ago — yet many people are operating from an industrial-age mindset that is no longer reality based. Instead of looking at their job as a business relationship, they view coworkers as family. Instead of questioning their company’s direction and assessing the capability of...

There are many ways to frame the role of leaders.  Differing orientations

My wife, a physician, does  surgery as part of  her practice.  She was recently concerned about what might have been arthritis in the knuckle of her right hand.  Surgery involves delicate movement requiring fine-motor control.  Arthritis could significantly impact her effectiveness.  Is there a corollary for those in leadership positions—is...

You are a human becoming—not a human being.  You might ask, “a human

becoming what?”  That’s a question only you can answer, but rest assured, you are becoming something different than what you currently are (even a corpse changes daily).  I am a human becoming__________.  Fill in the gap, it’s up to you.  You influence your own destiny...

Starting a group venture on a solid foundation, demands the presence of

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