Today’s obsession with credentials has a significant downside

Credentials are a fact of life, whether they are degrees, certificates, diplomas, titles, qualifications, or other real or symbolic “merit badges.” All have their place. They help us to feel confident, and encourage others to feel confidence in us. They allow us to bid for responsibility and accountability, [...]

Finding the creative, fertile ground between extremes may rely on NOT making up your mind

Being decisive is generally counted as one of the key requirements for a leader, especially the macho kind so heavily favored today. Leaders are expected to be both decisive and tenacious, once their decisions have been made — to stick to [...]

Facing the truth about what you are doing is the only way to avoid predictable — and often nasty — consequences

Conservatism may be the chosen political stance of many people in business, but it’s a poor way to create a better future. If you want to build a stronger business, a better and more satisfying [...]

Loyalists, whether to people or ideas, do themselves and their idols few favors. More non-conformists would help.

We all need doubt. It’s the driving force behind change, creativity, and independence of thought of every kind. Authoritarians and conformists — no surprises here — much prefer faith in fixed dogmas, including those of management: all the “truths” [...]

Today’s obsession with ways to increase your productivity may do as much harm as good

Last week, I wrote a piece for Lifehack.org entitled: “Do you REALLY need to get yet more things done?” In it, I raised some things that have been worrying me about the prevailing fashion for more and more books, magazine articles, [...]

How collusion impacts your life at work

One of the most insidious and destructive behaviors impacting life at work is collusion. Collusion occurs when two people tacitly agree to set aside their true selves in order to support some joint phoniness.
By colluding with someone, we allow one another to continue to feel emotionally safe. The price [...]

Maybe it really is time to take another line and stop cluttering up our lives with endless to-do lists

In the Huffington Post for February 20th, 2008, Lisa Earle Macleod published a challenging and combative article that attacks the whole notion of work/life balance. It’s worth reading the whole article, but here are a few [...]

More than a year ago, I visited an idea you may have come across yourself: the notion that certain things are too contradictory to be attainable together. In today’s environment, I think we all need to revisit that topic and consider whether we ever, truly, absorbed the message.
These four qualities describe most of the outcomes [...]

Most of the present economic and financial problems have been caused primarily by a single flaw: an almost total failure of leadership

The most obvious lesson of the so-called “credit crunch,” and all the financial and economic problems that flow from it, is going to be the hardest one of all for organizations to swallow. Their [...]

The final lesson in managing your boss

Sometimes, managing upwards is based on simpler principles that you might expect. That’s definitely the case with the last Law of Executive Behavior: the Law of Maximized Comfort. It states, quite simply, that executives, like almost everyone else like to be as comfortable as possible. They don’t like surprises [...]