“Art makes it look so easy. It’s like he comes to work and puts on his slippers.” That’s how one colleague described Art Jones, the best supervisor I’ve ever seen up close.  There never seemed to be problems with his team. They were always productive. When malcontents or slackers were transferred to  »  Read More

Asutosh Padhi, Gaurav Batra, and Nick Santhanam say they wrote The Titanium Economy: How Industrial Technology Can Create a Better, Faster, Stronger America because “We want to solve the limited understanding of the societal benefits that can be derived from the Titanium Economy.” Maybe they succeeded. I could  »  Read More

Go and see. Go and see the people on your team. We call that Management By Wandering Around (MBWA). Don’t stop there. Go and see your customers, whether they’re inside the company or outside. Try to see your team’s output from the customer’s perspective so you can do a better job. This is only  »  Read More

Walmart became the largest company in the world in 2002. That surprised some folks. Fortune celebrated the occasion by asking: “How did a peddler of cheap shirts and fishing rods become the mightiest corporation in America?” The business press likes dramatic new initiatives. It seems to prefer companies  »  Read More

Leaders are readers. Reading helps you discover ideas to try and expand your mental models. In this post, I point you to reviews of recent business books. You’ll find pointers to reviews of New Way to Think: Your Guide to Superior Management Effectiveness, Escape from Model Land: How Mathematical Models Can Lead Us  »  Read More

What you say and do are the tools you use to influence the behavior of the people who work for you. Your team members pay attention to what you say and what you do to get clues about what matters to you and what you expect them to do. Remember: the example you set determines the behavior you get. This is only one of  »  Read More

Howell Raines’ description of legendary Alabama football coach Bear Bryant is one of my favorite leadership quotes. He said: “Coach Bryant had an idea of how a gentleman should act, and if you watched him, you could figure it out.”  That’s leadership by example. Lots of people tell you that it’s  »  Read More

There are, conservatively, 300 gazillion books published every year. No one has the time to list them, let alone read them or review them. That’s a problem because there’s a lot of value in many books you may not hear about because of the clutter.  “Short Takes” is my humble effort to cut through  »  Read More

Your life is hectic, with demands on your time and attention coming from all points of the compass. You need to take some time for you. I’m talking about time to be alone, time to go out to dinner with someone you care about, or time to do something you love. Here’s reality. You won’t get that time if  »  Read More