When people think about the most important foundation for a company, they often think of the product or service, or that the look and feel of an organization is professional and dynamic. Typically, people – that is the founders, leaders, staff and customers – think about what the company does in terms of what it…
What does the world hold for us in 2019? I have some ideas… Earlier in the fall, I shared with you that I would be preparing a report for you on what I saw as the major trends and forces shaping the world next year. Well, it took a little longer than I had thought,…
“The first thing I will do as CEO is build a new strategic plan.” I have heard this many times from people who assume the role of a leader in an organization, or those who feel their organization is struggling. There is this automatic reflex – to build a new strategy – that many people…
The one thing that I have come to recognize in my own work and in working with many leaders is that we don’t often have a full sense of the state of affairs, and often we have a bias towards thinking we are in better shape than we actually are. Think about the last time…
For those of you that like Sapiens, Homo Deus by the same author, Yuval Noah Harrari, picks up where Sapiens left off. Sapiens was a backward look, and Homo Deus is a future cast of where we may end up given the predominant frames that we have developed as humans. Giving a tour de force…
Like Ian Bremmer, I am a big Niall Ferguson fan. I love his work on not only western civilization, money and previous world wars, but also his contrarian way of viewing the world. If you want some great Niall, take a listen to his podcast interview with Sam Harris – this one covered a lot…
While I was President and CEO of the Calgary Chamber, I sat through many award dinners for CEO’s that were being recognized for their career leadership and performance. Each of them spoke about different experiences and paths that shaped them into who they are today and bore influence on how they were a leader, there…
First off, I am a huge Ian Bremmer groupie. I think the guy is brilliant. And he has an amazing ability to synthesize so much into such a short, concise and impactful assessment. Bremmer is a political scientist that has created an outstanding consultancy based on giving insight to political and business leaders about what…
Measure What Matters by John Doerr (2018) is a timely book about setting targets and goals using an approach called Objectives and Key Results – OKRs. Author John Doerr, currently chair of Kleiner Perkins, a Silicon Valley based private equity firm, worked with Andy Grove at Intel in the 1980’s. Grove, while not the founder…
One of the things I have always enjoyed and done as part of all my roles throughout my career is to have a strong sense of what is going on in the world, and to be able to translate that into meaningful insight for my clients, stakeholders, members or partners. I consume a wide variety…