Recently I have been asked to lead several board and executive retreats through their annual strategic planning process. The similarities of their challenges are startling similar – regardless of industry, non-profit or for-profit organizations.
The days of plentiful donations for non-profits are gone. Double digit growth, for most companies, is a friend of distant past. Layoffs [...]

There have been many books written on Ethics over the years – including The Good Life by Gomes, The Ethics of Leadership by Ciulla, and a personal favorite, Ethics 101 by John Maxwell.
Frankly, as rich as so many of these books are, we often have a tendency to read them, even have the best of [...]

Happy 2010 everyone! I hope your year is off to a great start. Many of you have asked me to recap the most popular posts from 2009 – so my first posting of 2010 is just that: The Top Ten Between The Lines for 2009!
If you missed any of these, I hope you will read them as [...]

A year ago a friend of mine asked me to co-chair a charity event with her. At the time I said yes, I did not know I had been accepted into Georgetown University for my advanced certification program nor had the recession hit in full force. Thus began a year of growth, challenge, and discipline!
I [...]

Oprah and I have agreed on many things over the years; yet, imagine my surprise when I was reading her ‘What I Know for Sure’ column in this month’s magazine to find her expose on personal power. I quote:
“The secret is alignment: when you know for sure that you’re on course, and doing exactly what [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

I have started this blog at least a hundred times in the past 10 days. However, with the daily volatility in the world, quite candidly, I had a hard time getting my head around what I really wanted to say. Today, the world looks terribly different from when I started this entry.
The inevitable and unrelenting [...]

Why is it that if the people ‘on the company bus’ are a company’s most important asset, they are not treated as such?
For years, I have been taught through many leadership courses, business books, etc. that a company’s greatest asset is their ‘human capital.’ In fact, as early as 1982 when Tom Peters released, In Search of [...]

There was a Boy’s Club in my home town; however, to be honest, I had no real familiarity with it. I knew they were a ‘good outfit’ (through, what I know now, only as: ‘brand awareness’); yet, I had no first hand experience until this year. I have had the privilege of working with the [...]