The Unfear of the Known

Perhaps the best words of advice I received in the business world was to hire people who are not like me. The point was, when you want to build a team, you don’t need — or want — a lot of people who think and act the same way; you need contrasting views and opinions [...]

Falling off a bike

My daughter is riding her bike in the driveway right now.  Last year, I took her to a school parking lot and in an hour, got her to pedal on her own.  Yesterday, she started getting the hang of starting on her own.
If any of you have children, you’ve probably gone through what I’ve gone [...]

Making Beds

This week, has been a week I’ve been thinking hard about teams. Specifically, how do people get beyond their own individual motives to work with each other. Ironically, I ran across a June 2006 Fortune Magazine article on teams about a Wharton Business School student, Jim Vesterman, who signed up for the [...]

Phillipsburg

The Autumn before my Father died, we visited Phillipsburg, Montana. That previous Summer, before the surgery that left him unable to speak, my Dad had mentioned that his father had taken him to Phillipsburg and he wanted to see if he could recognize the place.  So, on a bright Fall morning, my Mom, my Dad [...]

10 Ways to Say “No” to Your Boss and Live to Tell about It

Tell me if this has ever happened.  You come into the office with a list of things that absolutely has to get done and you get a phone call, e-mail, “head poking in the cubicle” from your boss with some urgent task guaranteed to take you off your game and (if you’re a manager yourself) [...]