Heroes of modern leadership
Read moreEvery so often, probably a few times a year, I receive some sort of request to speak or write an article on a subject such as “heroes of modern leadership”. Coincidentally, this happened last week, just as I was preparing my post about Apple and the Hero Myth. Banco Galicia, an Argentine bank I work with, making speeches at their headquarters
Tim Cook, Steve Jobs, and the Hero Myth
Read moreOne of the subjects I have often spoken about for the past twenty years—in keynote addresses and corporate seminars—is “the myths and realities of leadership”. In these settings, I use the term myth to mean something that society persists in believing, in spite of the fact that it is clearly not true. For example, one of our common misconceptions is what I
Four things most effective leaders do on a continuous basis
Read moreIt seems that whenever I talk to an audience about how managers at any level of an organization can use personal stories of identity to inspire their teams and influence their worlds, someone asks a variation of this question: “Can you just give us a few quick tips or clues about how to get started and do this?” Of course, this is
How to make stories of purpose work in any organization
Read moreAs I wrote in a recent post, one of the questions that invariably come up from any of my public or corporate audiences is: “Can this stuff (engaging employees with stories of purpose, or ‘cathedral’ stories as we have sometimes called them) work in any type of enterprise?” In particular, people often ask about companies whose activity is in a less-than-glamorous, mundane realm, or
Who is the real Steve Jobs, and what are his lessons for us?
Read moreAs I begin to write this, I realize full well that one week ago I sketched out a plan and said that I might actually try to stick to it. At the same time, I did call it a “tentative” schedule for the coming weeks, even half-mocking my suggestion that I could actually stay on such a predefined course for very long. As such,
Three classic questions
Read moreDwight Eisenhower, the famous World War II general who would later become president of the United States, used to say that in battle he found plans to be useless, but that planning was indispensable. I could make a similar observation about writing a blog, at least in my case. At any point in time, I find it useful to plan