Early in my corporate career, I would, on occasion, keep my thoughts to myself even when I believed my ideas would help advance the discussion and that my contributions would make a difference. I was fearful that my ideas would be rejected or that my comments would be seen as irrelevant or even stupid. Fortunately, I had a great boss who valued my ideas and encouraged me to speak my mind at meetings. He told me that our firm needed...

I noticed my wife talking with her accountability partner, Christine the other morning. Sheila and Christine speak most mornings, checking in with each other about their accomplishments from yesterday and their objectives for today. For some reason, I stopped and listened a bit more than I usually do that morning. I noticed that not only were they checking in about what they had accomplished but were also sharing appreciations and compliments about what they had achieved. “That sounds so exciting.”...

Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference is happening this week in the Bay Area. Over 5000 participants will hear about Apple’s newest products and software and they, in turn, will share their latest and greatest ideas for apps, better ways to build iTunes and how Apple should improve the Apple Watch. In a similar vein, a Tweet came to my attention this past week about how the continued additions to mobile software is creating so much complexity for users without adding...

In 1949 Saab Motor Company changed the way automobile designers thought about cars. It was at that time that their engineers began to think about the safety from a “big picture perspective” and their Saab 92 was the first car built with a full body safety cage modeled after how airplanes were constructed. For sure, safety was on engineer’s minds before and after then, but incremental improvements that included such items as padded dashboards, safety glass and head rests didn’t...

A weekend trip to New York City had us staying at hotel within sight of the World Trade Center. A walk over to that hallowed grounds brought me for the third time face to face with the 9/11 Memorial Pools and our collective memory of that tragic day. The modern day resilience movement began that evening. How have we done from a resilience perspective over these past 16 years? From an economic point of view (we are staying in the...

An article in this past weekend’s Wall Street Journal pointed out that most recreational golfers are overconfident of their abilities. The research, based on studies of over 6 million tracked golf shots indicated that most of these players overestimate their ability (not me of course). Specifically, the investigators found that if a golfer needs to hit a shot 150 yards to reach a green, he or she will select a club that requires them to hit the shot perfectly to...