Stalking birds

Every morning, on walks, my dog stalks birds. She gets close. Never catches one. But here’s the thing, she never stops believing she will. What if she stopped believing? Would she be motivated and excited every day? Belief, even unrewarded, is what keeps us...

You have all the time

Cyril Northcote Parkinson said it in 1955. Work expands to fill the time available for its completion. Seventy years later, we still don’t believe him. Give a task two hours, it takes two hours. Give it two days, it takes two days. Not because the work is...

Seven secondhand sins

You can find a great deal at the vintage market. That is not what this is about. There is a category of secondhand that looks like wisdom, feels like strategy, and passes for leadership. It is none of those things. It is borrowed. And borrowed, in business, is rarely...

Skip the hype. Buy the ingredients

We live in an era of abundance. More tools, more frameworks, more consultants, more conferences promising transformation. And yet, most organizations are no more fundamentally healthy than they were before they bought it all. The problem is not information. We have...

Change hurts less than stagnation

We announce the change and assume the work is done. It never is. Change has a curve. John Fisher formalized it. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross described its emotional architecture long before business adopted the concept. The curve moves through denial, resistance,...