Recognize that the most difficult points in our leadership lives are profound moments of truth that define us going forward. We either face them, embrace them and grow stronger from them, or we let them beat us. A half-measure in the face of a profound moral or ethical call is failure of the highest order.
The Leadership Caffeine Blog
November, 2011 Leadership Development Carnival
The November Leadership Development Carnival is now live at Great Leadership. Dan McCarthy, the Blogger in Chief at Great Leadership provides a wonderful public service for all of us with his hard work in pulling together and producing these events. Check out this month’s bountiful harvest with 45 different writers selected for inclusion. And remember to thank Dan…on your way out!
Management and Leadership Week in Review for Oct 21, 2011
This week’s selections include content on The Great Tech War of 2012, ideas for strengthening your coaching skills, insight into three critical leadership skills and a book that offers something for all of us as we try to escape the pull of the past in our organizations.
Leadership Caffeine™—10 Situations to Throttle Back on Speed
Somewhere on the way to this world we now live and work in, “speed” became a proxy for success. Speed is undoubtedly important, but beware relying on it as the sole indicator of effectiveness. It’s a cruel tyrant, demanding fealty from followers, while discouraging critical and deep thinking and focusing solely on time-to-response as a metric of success. Here are at least 10 situations where you should resist the need for speed and call a timeout:
Steve Jobs-Walking With Giants
Twentieth Century Industrialist and the founder of Panasonic, Konosuke Matsushita, established a garden outside of the firm's modest headquarters in Osaka, Japan. In this garden, he commissioned and placed statues of his heroes. Fittingly, a giant statue of Thomas...
New Book from Art-Incoming!
While both the paperback and Kindle versions of my newest work, Leadership Caffeine-Ideas to Energize Your Professional Development, have been available on Amazon for a few days, I’ve not yet pulled the trigger on a public launch. In fact, when talking to my marketing manager, I suggested that instead of a launch as an event, I would much prefer a rolling launch.
Midweek Marketing: Delta Builds Customer Experience One Detail at a Time
I’ve been an unapologetic critic of the money losing and seemingly customer hating airline industry for many years. Anyone who has flown a million miles or more has a good view to the workings of this flying bus business (with apologies to bus companies), and the view is mostly unpleasant. (Not always, just mostly.) Imagine my surprise when I deviated on my return trip from my normal dealings with United, and flew Delta, and I actually enjoyed the experience. I checked my calendar and it wasn’t April Fools Day or Halloween, so all of the truly good natured, helpful and smiling Delta employees might have actually meant it. Here are 7 observations and some lessons for all of us worth sharing:
The Conversations You Are Not Having Are Killing Your Business
The most important issue that most leaders and teams face is not in what is being said, but rather, it’s the important topics not being discussed. Here are the 10 conversations not taking place in your business right now.

