I watched a wonderful speech by Rory Sutherland on my flight recently from Barcelona to Dublin. He shared several valuable concepts, but one that stuck with me – how to balance Exploration and Exploitation in our lives and in our businesses. Explore new things. Then focus on what works. What’s your balance? How is your … Read more
David Senra of Founders Podcast recently shared a summary list of lessons from Warren Buffett which I found valuable: Here’s the original tweet from David Senra: If you liked this post, you will also like Warren Buffett: “We Need Inspirational Leaders” and Warren Buffett’s Greatest Error.
“CEOs are in the business of making decisions” Sam Reese, Vistage CEO I’ve been reflecting this week on a quote from Economist Thomas Sowell “There are no solutions, only trade-offs.” I work with CEOs. They take decisions. They feel responsible for the consequences of these decisions. They often wait to find a “perfect solution” rather … Read more
“Most people prefer a problem they can’t fix to a solution they don’t like” Lee Thayer This sentence is mad…. but there is a certain truth to it. Lee Thayer is the author of several books on the practice of Leadership. He was a big proponent of working to integrate thinking, being and doing into … Read more
Back in 2009, Stanford prof Tina Seelig split students in the school of engineering into teams and gave them an envelope containing $5. Teams had only two hours to generate as much money as possible. Each team would get three minutes to present their project to the entire class. Here is Tina’s own article explaining the experience: The $5 … Read more
We have a wonderful capacity to mess up our lives through lazy or fantasy thinking. We make blanket black and white statements… rather than seeking the shades of grey. “I hate my job” -> what parts exactly? Life is richer than black and white. You don’t hate every single part, activity, person in your job… … Read more
Our emotional experience of life can depend on the time horizon we choose to look at our lives. If you look at the progress of your life each day, there are many wild swings. If you look at the progress of your life over longer time horizons, the wild swings blur into the background and … Read more
In 1972, a plane carrying rugby team from Uruguay crashed in the high Andes. 25 passengers survived the crash… and then found themselves trapped high on a glacier. Initially they waited for search parties to arrive. On day 10, they heard on the radio “the search has been called off”. This day they realised that … Read more
Convenience makes things easy… but what is easy is not always whats most important, valuable or effective. We choose between the options we see, not all the options… we’ve got to be increasingly careful that we don’t choose the path that is just easiest to see. Convenience food… is not health food. Tech companies work … Read more
This is the recording of a session I did yesterday with IESE Business School on the topic of writing as a tool to help your career. In this context, writing is not so much about writing for magazines or in a blog… but writing to set goals, to stay focussed, to identify what is important, … Read more