What’s your end game?  Business owners seldom have an answer to that

question—they usually lament about being too busy to even consider possibilities.  It’s an undeniable fact that your game will end.  Will you sell the business…turn it over to the next generation…or perform a daily grind until you die—leaving your family and the government...

Einstein believed that dreaming was more important than knowledge or deduction

I was on the phone recently with a good friend. Somehow we got talking about dreams and how unique our dreams are to us. We weren’t talking about REM cycle dreams; we were talking about our life dreams – what we want for our lives and how we want our lives to be. I’ll admit that I am a dreamer – always thinking of what comes next, how things...

Many people dream without follow through.  Whimsical thinking has its

place but all too often purposeful visions never see the light of day.  Typically, the full impact of not acting on “what might have been” doesn’t hit until our later years—that’s when disappointment sets in.  Jimny Cricket said it best, “when your heart is in your...

Be kind, even to those who are being unkind. Kindness is about realizing that there is greatness in all of us–everybody deserves to be treated as valuable–even when it is not deserved. Kindness is intentional. In kindness mode, we bring the best of us to each situation. We listen more intently and connect honestly. The amazing thing about...

In an increasingly competitive world, businesses will not survive or grow

...

They hang prominently on lobby walls, get published in annual reports,

and appear on most corporate websites.  When asked to recite their lofty declarations, too many managers have to extract them from desk drawers.   Corporate values…publishing them just seems like the right thing to do so PR firms rake in millions of dollars each year creating...

Core values are personal distillations of what you’ve learned to date

.  They form a perceptual screen through which you view and make sense of the world.  A huge challenge for athletic coaches, orchestra leaders, and last but not least, business owners, is to develop a solid foundation of ‘cultural-values’ that will support a peak performance...

Leadership is about what goes on within and between people whereas management

The “I” of life’s hurricanes are your core values.  When blown off course, leaders turn to what they believe to get centered.  They understand that vision represents values in the future tense —what people believe influences what they can and cannot see.  Leaders help followers clarify a set of cultural-values for the group—then meld them...

Non linear thinking has been a lifelong compulsion beyond my capacity (

Mid-career graduate studies in the applied behavioral sciences taught me to appreciate and more effectively work with disciplined thinkers.  Paradoxical thinking—as opposed to selling or defending personal positions from either end of the vision:production continuum, helps holistic and linear thinkers meld their gifts and achieve synergistic...

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...