Between the Lines

My last blog focused on the underrated trait of ‘raw kahunas’ or bravery in our leaders today. Today, I want to focus on what I perceive to be another kindred quality in short supply these days: creativity. I think most of us in business, (certainly those with children who are missing out on creative courses [...]

As I watched the coverage of the 40 year anniversary of the Apollo lunar landing last week, one thought kept entering my mind: these men were so brave! Can you imagine going into space in a lightweight craft traveling at 25,000 miles per hour? Can you imagine landing on the moon with literally only 20 [...]

Mary is an up and coming leader in a Fortune 50 company. Over the course of her career, she has managed to zig zag her way into a nice position of great authority and power. However, of late, due to a significant corporate acquisition, she is now maneuvering new executive additions to her organization, and [...]

The situation is this: Bob is an executive who doesn’t believe he is taken seriously by his new immediate manager (an SVP of a publicly traded company) and his manager’s associated leadership team. His boss disagrees with his ideas and approaches for the business, and questions his overall ability to ‘think strategically.’ He categorizes Bob as [...]

Southwest Airlines, Whole Foods Markets, and Target are just a few companies whose stores (or planes) I frequent. I began to wonder, particularly in this recession, how these companies were continuing to perform relatively well – despite people’s reduction in discretionary spending. Every time I head to Love Field in Dallas the Southwest terminal is buzzing and [...]

Bruno Bettelheim was a Holocaust survivor who achieved fame and fortune through his work as a child psychologist. The opening line in his book The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales (Penguin Psychology) is: “If we hope to live not just from moment to moment, but in true consciousness of our [...]

I love a great “feel good” movie. Many of our wonderful feel good movies revolve around sports – Hoosiers, Rudy, The Rookie … we all have our favorites. Mine is about a horse (still athletic, just four not two legs). It was 1938 – a year of monumental hardship and challenges, not unlike 2009. People were [...]

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage – Anais Nin Our news sources continue to be dire. As individuals, what steps can we take? Continue to wring hands and worry? Continue to deny ourselves a look at our 401k and investment reports? Since the beginning of 2008, Americans have lost 3.6million jobs. (Read [...]

As I talk and consult and read and study, I’ve asked myself … where is the ‘sacred responsibility’ to make thoughtful, responsible, and extremely hard choices for the good of the whole amongst our corporations? Last week I had the opportunity to meet with the executive director of the Boys and Girls Club of America with which [...]

I was reading an article last week about a man who was a star athlete in a small town in Texas and at 19 years of age was in a tragic car accident. His 1955 Ford Thunderbird flipped over several times and he was left a quadriplegic – he literally could move nothing below his [...]