Smart people can often be prima donnas – I’ve heard those accusations myself … the first part, of course, not the second (and typically disguised in less elegant terms) … but the brilliance of some people is often more blinding than enlightening.
Fortune magazine recently asked Dr. Mehmet Oz about the best leadership advice he had ever received.
Keep Smart People from Killing Each Other
As a Chief Resident associated with Columbia University, Dr. Oz’ mentor told him that the hardest part of being a leader was “keeping smart people from killing each other.” (more…)
If the execution of a company’s plans is an avowed priority, critical to the success of both the CEO and the business, why aren’t CEOs spending enough time on it to make it successful?
Why is it that every time the Conference Board surveys CEOs to identify their Top Ten Challenges, “consistent execution of strategy” or “excellence in execution” is invariably cited as being in the top two or three “greatest concerns”?
Yet, when CEOs are asked about their greatest disappointments or failures, they routinely list their company’s inability to execute?
Conundrum … Mystery … Enigma
Huh?
How is it that a subject among the top three goals of most CEOs is the very one where the CEO has the least amount of success? Is this simply a conundrum tucked inside a mystery hidden inside an enigma … or can we sort out some of this ambiguity? (more…)
That was my reaction as I scanned the dining room at the Assisted Living facility into which my 93-year-old mother just moved.
Not because it isn’t a terrific facility.
It’s one of the nicest I have ever seen, visited or heard about, with a wonderful and genuinely caring staff. No, it’s not that at all.
It wasn’t weariness, either, although it did follow on the heels of a draining four-day transition, including a crushing array of painful and tedious sorting, organizing, shopping and hauling to massively downsize and, sadly, to discard even more memorabilia from a rich life of living.
[pullquote]This article was originally intended as my holiday message to you. It was published in the December 26 electronic edition of the North Bay Business Journal, but published in the print edition on January 9. Its spirit, however, is eternal.[/pullquote]
Not all of it mind you.
There’s a lot of important family history to preserve
Two big boxes of family history are headed my way, as I’m the last stop for any chance to digitize and preserve almost a century of living so it can be shared throughout the widespread family.
All of the forthcoming scanning and cataloging will be a dose of dullsville … invited and welcome, yes … but infinitely time-consuming nonetheless.
It includes hundreds … more likely, thousands … of photographs, yearbook pages, commencement programs, newspaper articles, announcements and the collective minutiae that memorialize a life, two lives really.
My father, who passed away 10 years ago … as one who never let a piece of paper slip through his hands … successfully squirreled away records and magazines from as far back as the 1940s and 1950s that escaped our notice in the decade-earlier downsizing round.
It’s not just sentiment or nostalgia
You might figure that the tears are sentimental or nostalgic. I wish it were that simple. (more…)
What’s missing? Why do we keep wrestling with the same issues that we’ve examined and discussed throughout our careers?
That’s what makes it both fascinating … and painful … to be reminded about our timeless journey and our ongoing struggle to find the right balance to fulfill the lives we envision for ourselves.
“To be or not to be that is the question.”
I’ve always been intrigued by Shakespeare’s line … not only because of its famous lineage, but because so few know the words that follow and give the phrase its power:
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This phrase is powerful in so many ways.
What’s missing? Why do we keep wrestling with the same issues that we’ve examined and discussed throughout our careers?