Vision 2021 | Creating a Path to the Future
The Great Disruption If life were a George Orwell novel, 2020 might be accurately described as the year of the “Great Disruption”, although people have been affected in very different ways. Some have endured devastating loss, many have experienced acute anxiety and...
Essential Leadership Conversations
According to Gallup, employees who have regular meetings with their managers are almost three times as likely to be engaged. Effective meetings and open communication between leaders and their teams is even more important in today's volatile business environment. ...
Instruments of Inspiration
We have a choice every day to confront a system that is not serving people or to give in to its machinery, extracting small favors for our own benefit. When our focus is on “beating the system”, or finding ways around frustrating policy in our organizations, we undermine the possibility of real and lasting change.
From Where I Stand, How Can I Serve?
On Sunday, Dahleen Glanton of the Chicago Tribune challenged all of white America to take responsibility for the systemic racism that has existed in this nation since it’s inception. As a captive of my own white privilege, it was a difficult op-ed to read, but there...
Today is Going To Be Awesome
Perhaps for the first time in our lives, many of us are learning that mental health is not the same thing as the absence of mental illness. We need to actively prioritize our mental health the same way we invest in our physical health – through disciplined...
Law #11 | There is no Blame
According to an NBC news report today, “The Trump Administration is trying … to get the United Nations Security Council to blame China for the novel Coronavirus pandemic.” It appears that this effort has failed so far, but the demand is hindering efforts to arrive at...
Tracks in the Snow: How Habit Science Can Help Us Keep Our New Year Resolutions
We often go into the New Year with ambitious goals but without plans for how we will achieve them. And when we are not immediately successful, we give up or give ourselves a hard time. Understanding these five elements of change will improve the odds of sustaining...
Systems Thinking | A Tool for Understanding Asylum Seeking
One of the many headlines making news over the summer was the U.S. President’s decision to cut foreign aid to three Central American nations – Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. Most of the people seeking asylum at the U.S./Mexico border are fleeing abject poverty...
Beyond Individuals | I am the System
For the second year in a row, and the seventh time this century, Time Magazine has honored a movement or group of people working largely outside conventional leadership platforms as their "Person" of the Year (POY). While some are already framing this choice as a...
120,000 Intentional Acts
Rather than “selling” a solution, we needed to walk everyone through a problem-solving and habit-changing process that would uncover sources of resistance to change, make the problem personal and discussable, identify a first step that was so simple that it could be universally applied, and then support the change agents by continuing to build their capacity.