As humans we like to believe we're good at seeing the whole picture. But, as I suggested in this piece, most of us are not. This is particularly true in business. Most managers focus relentlessly on serving the customer, making incremental improvements to core product or services, or finding yet another margin-saving efficiency. There is…

If you are a manager and want to position your company or organization to succeed in the future, I'd suggest changing the normal managerial question of "How do I get more out of my employees?" to "How do I get the best out of my employees?" Why? because passion, energy, creativity and innovation aren't easily…

“One of the most important disciplines in the twenty-first will be no discipline at all,” writes Frank Moss in his new book, The Sorcerers and Their Apprentices—a new book about MIT’s Media Lab. So does this mean the hard disciplines of physics, mathematics, chemistry, and engineering can be abandoned? Absolutely not. Instead, the school—whose stated mission…

Seth Godin has a wonderful post today entitled "Headroom" in which he states, "The only thing worse than being able to say, "my boss won't let me," is having to acknowledge, "my boss will let me." It's a great point. Now what if, as a manager or leader in your organization, you told people your default managerial…

The global supply chain is an impressive feat of modern management. The problem is that in its quest to squeeze out ever greater efficiencies with its "just-in-time" system of inventory it has left itself extremely vulnerable to large, rare and unpredictable events such as the recent Japanese earthquake-tsunami. Such events are, of course, unpredictable but…

The above headline is no surprise. Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, as well as the producers of "The Office" have gotten rich off of the fodder of clueless executives. The real danger, however, is the bright and intelligent executive who is arrogant. I have longer warned of the dangers of experts but I encourage…