Instead of studying leadership, why not spend some time studying leaders and strategies in the wild? You can learn a lot from leadership experts, but you always see the leader and what he or she does through the expert’s personal lens. Supplement that learning with studying real leaders in real life situations and draw your own conclusions. The posts in this series will help you.

Every week I’ll point you to articles by and about real leaders in real situations and to articles about how real companies are faring in the marketplace. Read them. Think about them. Draw your own lessons and conclusions from them. Then try to apply those lessons in your own real life.

This week I’m pointing you to articles about Carlson Hotels, Truth Bar, building a successful team, Janie Goddard, and Amazon vs. WalMart.

From Nicole Norfleet: Carlson Hotels to change name as Minnesota company looks to future

“Under new ownership, the company has new executives and a plan to aggressively expand the number of hotels it runs.”

From Elliot Begoun: A calling, an intention, a business

“I met Sean Fay of Truth Bar at Expo West in 2017. Somehow, amid all the chaos, we had a meaningful 15-minute conversation about their brand and their journey. It left me wanting to learn more. He connected me with his co-founder, Diana Stobo, and their recently hired CEO, Marilynn Martin.”

From Adam Bryant: How to Build a Successful Team

“Building a successful team is about more than finding a group of people with the right mix of professional skills. Over the course of interviewing over 500 leaders for Corner Office, I asked them all about the art of fostering a strong sense of teamwork. Their insights can help you lay the groundwork for a highly productive team that can communicate, cooperate and innovate in an atmosphere of mutual trust and respect.”

From Stan Linhorst: Janie Goddard on leadership: Be open to learning because effective leadership is a life-long journey

“Janie Goddard is president of JADAK, a North Syracuse company that designs and manufactures devices that ‘see.'”

Thanks to Smartbrief on Leadership for pointing me to this story

From the Economist: The beast of Bentonville battles Amazon, the king of the e-commerce jungle

“A BOA constrictor swallowing capitalism. A cyclone dragging the economy into its vortex. If you look back at how people described Walmart a decade ago, it is eerily similar to how Amazon is viewed now. The supermarket chain has ‘a scale of economic power we haven’t encountered before’, warned ‘The Walmart Effect’, a best selling book in 2006. But capitalism never stands still. The world’s largest company by sales is now the perceived underdog in an escalating grocery war with Amazon to fill 320m American bellies. The struggle will probably end in a messy stalemate. That will mean mediocre returns for investors—and happy days for consumers.”