Having your team understand what innovation is, is central to realizing the transformative potential of innovation projects.  For many, the critical flaw in their quest to be more innovative is to get what IT is wrong.  The most common mistake I see is to confuse [...]

When I was going into my last year of high school my family moved across the country.  At the time, it felt like my life was ending – moving far away from my friends and community, uprooting the homestretch of my high school career.  I [...]

Strategy is fundamentally about making choices.  Who you want to be as an organization – and who you won’t be.  What direction you are going – and what path you are not taking.  This is what separates good strategy from bad.  If you have not made [...]

My good friend Hal and his wife have been married for 50 years.  He told me the secret to their marriage is that early on they agreed: She would be in charge of all the small decisions in their life, and he would handle all [...]

In lots of facets of my work, I often find myself having to convince people of the value of deep consultation.  The barriers are twofold here I think: It is harder and takes more time There is fear about what you might find out There [...]

I recently witnessed something amazing.  When discussing a new program to help some of society’s most vulnerable, a team member asked whether current customers might frown on this.  What about a ‘bad headline’ that sticks with our customers, they asked? The CEO responded, without hesitation, [...]