Dress code for the brain

Steve Jobs wore the same thing every day. Black mock turtleneck. Black pants. Done. Not because he lacked style. Because he understood something most people miss entirely. Every decision costs something. Not money. Energy. The kind that compounds quietly until the...

Goals without outcomes

We confuse completing things with accomplishing things. At the end of every quarter, we review the list. Items checked. Meetings held. Initiatives launched. And we call it a win, even when the needle hasn’t moved. The problem isn’t effort. We’re very...

The game we never stop playing

“The speed of the leader is the speed of the pack.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson Kids don’t read the memo. They watch. The founder who cuts corners teaches her team that corners exist to be cut. The executive who dismisses questions trains his people to...

Too much, too fast

I think about this often. We are living in the most extraordinary information age in human history, and I am not sure we have fully reckoned with what that means. The access is stunning. In 2012 alone, IBM estimated that 2.5 exabytes of new data were generated every...

The map you keep ignoring

Every leader has guiding principles. Most just can’t name them. That is the problem. Warren Buffett built Berkshire Hathaway on a single unwavering principle: invest in businesses with durable competitive advantages, then do nothing. Not clever tactics. Not...