Well, who are you? (Who are you? Who, who, who, who?)I really wanna know (Who are you? Who, who, who, who?)Tell me, who are you? (Who are you? Who, who, who, who?)‘Cause I really wanna know (Who are you? Who, who, who, who?)The Who, 1978When the English rock band The Who (Roger Daltrey, Pete Townshend, plus bassist john Entwistel and drummer Keith Moon) recorded one of their iconic 70’s anthems, their chorus posed a hauntin...

"How we spend our days, of course, is how we spend our lives" - Annie Dillard, The Writing LifeThe meeting was in downtown Boston, about a 25 minute ride with no traffic. For some reason I had reserved only 30 minutes travel time on my calendar. Then it dawned on me, that when I got there I would have the nauseating round and round drive through a circular parking garage; 13 precision point turns of the wheel to maneuver...

“The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.” - Steven CoveyIt’s that time of year - corporate strategy meetings, team off-sites, global leadership meetings, board of director meetings; they’re coming fast and furious. If you’re like my clients you are preparing at least one presentation, probably a few. Some of my clients go into this process like a Chinese fire drill (which I r...

We were crammed like sardines into a conference room smaller than my kid sister’s bedroom growing up, and believe me that’s Lilliputian - it was a sewing room before she came along and sort of surprised my parents. Anyway, the Bates team was crowded into our smallest meeting room debating whether the image of a Native American should be included on a PowerPoint slide with a proverb that we had recently learned could not be...

Suddenly it’s become this thing. I didn’t used to hear it that often but lately everybody’s talking about how their leaders need to tell stories.The reason most people can’t find their leadership stories is because when asked, they can only remember the stories they’ve been telling at neighborhood cocktail parties or around the family dinner table on Thanksgiving. You know - the one everybody likes about how in third grad...

After reading the 1,347th article on the iPad this month, I got to thinking about buzz. What does Steve Jobs know about creating buzz that could help the rest of us take our business ideas from good to breakthrough? What does he understand that makes otherwise normal people wait on line with grungy strangers for days on end without food or porta potties to get their hands on a device that nobody has even laid eyes on?As...

I have a theory about why people say stupid things in meetings. Having said a few stupid things in my own career, I went searching for an answer that didn’t malign overall intelligence. So my theory is that most of the time when people say something dumb they’re doing it out of courage. They believe whatever they have to say has to be said.Of course it is important to encourage people to speak freely. If the CEO has noth...

Not long ago, I sat in on a presentation at a business conference and thought I’d landed on Mars. The program topic was compelling but somehow the presenter managed to take us into outer space. No one was following him. I wondered why this is so complicated. The guy had managed to hide his brilliance under a bushel - seizing confusion from the jaws of clarity.Whenever someone says,”I don’t want to dumb it down,” I know...

The other night three of us from our firm were taking the high speed Acela train home from New York. We clambered aboard at Penn Station and grabbed one of those foursome setups where the seats face each other. I was okay with it as long as I didnft have to ride backward. With one empty seat left, we were relieved and delighted when our friend Marcia unexpectedly appeared, exclaiming well, my day just got a whole lot be...

About seven or eight years ago, I worked with the CEO of a global manufacturing firm. We were in his office for about 2.5 hours (in theory for a media training but he didn’t want to because he was tired) so we talked mostly about his career. I gently raise the oh-so-popular topic of a succession plan. Did he have one? Not really. Who would be in line for his job? Four or five people could be ready someday. Did he wan...