A friend of mine has been trading quotes like this with me; there is an abundance online. Colin Robinson is a vampire from the wildly inappropriate “What We Do in the Shadows” series based on the movie by the same name. You might notice that I haven’t done a “redemptive movie review” about that one…

I used to have a similar conversation with every new hire when I was running businesses. I was the last interview, testing for cultural fit. My conviction around the cultural fit should be obvious, but the things I shared in addition to that I scoured from over three decades of working alongside great leaders in dozens of companies…

One of the first questions we received from the “first Africa” South Africans we began working with was regarding our plans to serve “second” and “third” Africa. As we stumbled around in conversation with them, a leader who spent most of her time serving that Africa with women in and out of the penal system and prostitution, answered…

Summer is over. The kids are back in school, vacations have been completed, and things are getting back to normal. Right? Not right! There is nothing normal about the world in which we are living. We have become more accustomed to these crazy times, but there is nothing customary about these days.

But summer, oh summer! It was a rescue, right? Probably a little “yes" and a little "no”. We got our heads back above water, cleared out a bit of the cobwebs, and actually rested and recharged a bit. But below the surface, we are still dog-paddling like mad. We are also painfully…

When I was managing a large investment portfolio for a bank, I had groups of people reviewing pretty much every move I made. There were internal auditors, external examiners, and regulators of several varieties because of my securities licensing, the fact we were exchange-traded, etc., etc., etc.

There were literally billions of reasons why they needed to be watching so closely. I get it, but we always hoped for more of a collaborative working relationship with all of them. None of them seemed to be motivated by our improvement, desire to get better, or our commitment to doing things right.

Before we lead corporate offsites, we survey all the team members who will be in attendance. We offer anonymity, but use tools like SWOT, The Seven Helpful Questions, and sometimes even an organizational health assessment. We humbly tell the owner or senior leader that we will likely have a better lens than they do regarding what is actually going on in the company.

Most companies do anything they can to avoid conflict. They want to suppress dissension, keep their problems in the closet, and sweep everything under the rug. This is not only unhelpful…

If you are going to make it anywhere, there are two crucial pieces of data that you must have: where you are going and where you are. Google Maps requires my destination and then either assumes my current location as a starting point or asks me to supply one…

The folks at Praxis warned us last March (you remember life before the pandemic took hold, right?) that we were entering an ice age, and nothing would ever be the same again. We thankfully read that article when it was released and took it very seriously. I remember the uncertainty, fear, and hope we all had that this would all be over by Summer. This article was a cold slap in the face for us and the dozens of business leaders we gathered with on Zoom calls…

Ian Morgan Cron, a popular author and speaker says that the single highest indicator of a leader's success is their level of self-awareness. Not giftedness, not experience, not intelligence, but instead knowing oneself and how you affect the world around you.

One aspect of self-awareness is realizing that we all have learned patterns (typically from our families growing up) about dealing with stress.

Knowing your enneagram number is a helpful way to become more aware of your patterned responses to stress. Still, Brene Brown talks about more general categories that she learned…

We've all heard the adage that despite what kind of company we have or industry we operate in, we are all essentially in the "people business." I initially heard it in the context of valuing the desire and interest of the people that make up all our client bases, but more recently, it seems like employees are the "people" to whom all are referring. All of our employees, after all, are people…

We just finished our most recent quarterly meeting and it was other-worldly. Our quarterly meetings follow a similar pattern. They are offsite, at least half a day, and carry similar agenda. We connect deeply as a team, do a deep dive on the cultural anchors of core values and purpose, and then review our vision. We are reminding ourselves of who we are at the deepest and most definitional level. We are looking at the inspirational…

When all hope is lost, the unexpected appearance of goodness is at the heart of the meaning of eucatastrophe. It is also at the heart of every great story and the beautiful and poignant way the Divine often shows up in our story. This is one of the hallmarks of living a life with God. Oswald Chambers says that living this way is an obvious “tell” to whether we are living this way…

I was having coffee and working on a project ahead of a lunch meeting. A younger man I used to coach came into the shop, noticed me, and joined me at my table for two. There was a lightness and ease with him that surprised me. He was expressing the joy he was experiencing in this season and giving me updates on how well his professional and personal life was trending…

The first movie I remember being captivated by was Breaking Away. The story of a young man trapped in a small town in Indiana who begins to dream of a world beyond his own through the lens of biking and the European world, where biking was king. He becomes a vicarious world traveler. Realizing that his mother kept an updated passport for years without a single stamp only strengthened his resolve…

I arrived at this conclusion over a decade ago. I had a friend in a problem marriage. We were meeting to discuss how to deal with things and possibly solve some of the challenges they were facing. It became very clear that he didn’t feel like any of the problems they were facing were related to him. He said it was 100% due to his wife. I asked him if he could identify even 1% of the problem as being his. He said, “No.”…

There is a woman in one of our leadership classes that I'm especially drawn to. She is a brilliant and successful leader who can take charge and "get things done." When she came to her first meeting several years ago, she had this authentic beauty about her, but it was buried under years of pain and heartache that gave rise to a defensive posture and unattainable perfectionism. The tenderness in her eyes didn't match the clinching of her jaws, but it was there.

We strongly encourage all the entrepreneurs we work with to go through our LifePlan retreat. Getting clear on the life they are intended to live is a crucial first step in having the clarity and conviction it takes to get their business working for them. Once they have their ideal life in clear focus, doing the work it takes to re-engineer their business to support that life becomes a foregone conclusion…

According to the Gallup Organization, Gen Z and Millenials now make up 46% of the full-time workforce in the United States. A recent survey of what they are looking for from an employer revealed some pretty interesting things.