Just because you can do something does not mean you should do it. Optimization creates unintended consequences that can undermine your business. Baseball may be the most data-mined sport. Ever since the championship Oakland A’s Moneyball, big data has dominated the game. Big data told you where and how to pitch the ball to a […]
Ted Lasso leadership isn’t possible in real life. Ted Lasso is a person of reflexive positivity who remains blissfully ignorant of the job and yet wins everyone over while consistently losing games. Ted Lasso is not a mentor, he’s a mirror, showing us our own absurdity. WHY IT MATTERS: When we see what’s wrong, we […]
D-Day shows how the best leaders respond. General Dwight Eisenhower could not control the Nazi High Command, but he reinforced their biases that General Patton would lead the main attack at the Pas de Calais. The deception enabled the Allies to secure the Normandy beaches and move inland. The Germans assumed for six more weeks […]
I recently attended the Wisconsin Red Cross Brave Hearts award gala, grateful to receive the military award for last fall’s 1700-mile Fallen Hero Honor Ride. The stories of the award recipients were extraordinary. I met a 9-year-old girl who saved a friend’s life at school using the Heimlich and a sixteen-year-old who engineered a blood […]
Podcast: Perseverance and Determination My parents, David and Joanne, and three siblings—Dan, Laura and Mark—all taught me the importance of perseverance and determination, the will to succeed at whatever you put your mind to. We would always challenge one another to be the best that we could be. Determination helped me endure some terrible experiences. […]
What’s the difference between a strategy and a plan? Afghanistan, 2007. We were executing our plan perfectly. All of our metrics indicated that we were on an upward trajectory. We were working hard, creating efficiencies, and consistently improving. We felt good about our performance. And yet, we were not succeeding. That was exactly how I […]
The Bucks and Bruins show why you should not fixate on outcomes. You shouldn’t compete to win. The teams with the best regular season records in basketball (Milwaukee Bucks) and hockey (Boston Bruins) lost in the first round of their respective playoffs. Not a single #1 seed in Men’s College basketball made it past the […]
Accountability is challenging, as you know. You will want to hold people accountable for meeting performance and behavioral standards but don’t want to come across as a jerk. Here are five action steps that can help you to do that. 1. Clarify your expectations. I found that the fault was usually mine, whenever one of […]
Assumptions are powerful, often subconscious beliefs that guide your decisions and actions. What happens when these assumptions turn out to be false? The consequences can be far-reaching and even derail progress toward your goals. therefore, learning the art of questioning beliefs and challenging assumptions is crucial. The example of butter illustrates this point well. Many people […]
The media is filled with stories of people being awful to each other, and you’d swear we live in an anti-social dystopia. These stories are true, but they are not representative. How I was able to recognize awesome This weekend in Windsor, California I was able to recognize awesome. I was doing a recon for […]
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