At IESE this week, Steven MacGregor ran 3 sessions on “Sustaining Executive Performance”. Keeping healthy is one aspect of successful executives. The human being functions best under conditions of stress followed by recovery. Too much stress leads to breakdown. Too much recovery leads to atrophy. The best form of recovery is sleep. How can you … Read more
There are two types of ignorance: Deliberate Ignorance and Understandable Ignorance. Understandable Ignorance A non-financial expert is not expected to know how to calculate discounted cash flow valuations for publicly listed firms. A European is not expected to know how baseball scoring works. A non-programmer is not expected to understand the syntax of C++ or php … Read more
I read an interview with Kathy Button Bell in the NY Times yesterday. She is Chief Marketing Officer at Emerson. She talks about being coached by the U.S. Olympic Lacrosse coach during her time at Princeton: Kind and Tough, How a Boss should be“She just knew how to inspire you to do more. The thing … Read more
“Water is fluid, soft, and yielding. But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft, and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard. This is another paradox: what is soft is strong.” Lao Tzu Soft Power is part of Leadership Soft Power is necessary … Read more
Peter Shallard says that the currency of Human Potential is willpower. Willpower is a finite asset. It is like a budget that you can choose to spend as you like – but (unlike EU nations) this budget must balance. I disagree. No amount of willpower is strong enough to overcome our unconscious impulses. No amount of … Read more
In a recent article Tom Friedman of the New York Times ponders whether we have evolved from the Iron Age to the Industrial Age to the Information Age to the Age of Interruption, in which the “malady of modernity” is that we are now all afflicted with chronic multi-tasking and chronic partial attention induced by cell phones, email, the internet, handhelds, … Read more
We would achieve much more if we got out of our own way. The difference between the top athletes and the rest is not better physical ability, but an ability to avoid talking themselves into failure at the key moments. Performance = Potential – Self-Sabotage I remember Peter Allis commenting on golf years ago. A … Read more
Fear of Failure Clinging to one’s comfort zone Arrogance Defensiveness Impatience Rigid mindset Lack of perspective From Pablo Cardona and Helen Wilkinson’s book “Growing as a Leader“. Have a great weekend.
Experts get it wrong. The price we pay in trusting experts to take the important decisions for us is huge. We don’t like uncertainty. Experts give us a sense of certainty. I don’t know what to do with my savings. I go to a financial “expert”. He tells me what to do. I hand it … Read more
Seth Godin’s blog post today is Easy and Certain. The lottery is easy. It is not certain, but it is easy. Many choose an MBA because it feels certain. It is not easy, but it feels certain. Once you’ve got the diploma on the wall… success is inevitable… There is a spanish word “chollo”. “Un … Read more