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In my January 2025 newsletter, I highlighted the need for improving rapid, principle-based decision making. The reason principle-based decision making is important is that we can’t possibly anticipate, and therefore pre-reason, the decisions that we’ll have to make in the future. Faced with having to work at speed, without a

People approach solving problems differently, even if they’re using the same tools and methods. It’s one of the reasons for the name of my book, and one of the reasons I’m talking to people on the People Solve Problems podcast. Because problem solving is a collection of applied skills that

I recently attended the National Association of Corporate Directors Summit, which I’ve done several times since being appointed to my first board seat 15 years ago. The lineup was impressive, including Bill Gates, Wayne Peacock, CEO of USAA, James Gorman, longtime CEO of Morgan Stanley, Clare Martorana, Federal Chief Information

Conflict is everywhere. It’s not inherently a bad thing. When managed properly and worked through, it’s actually beneficial and productive. When left unchecked and left to fester, it is toxic and can destroy a relationship, team, or even an organization. There are many methods and strategies that are helpful in

Narrow Your Focus to Find Your Ideal Customer Every company, product manager, sales leader, and CEO should be thinking about their target market. Who would make their best customers? I believe that the parameters used to define target markets are too broad and vague and that efforts to significantly narrow

As AI continues to gain momentum within companies, it’s important to distinguish between two main categories of AI usage: stationed, strategic projects, and the personal, often hidden, use of AI by individuals in their workflows. One challenge in the latter category is that people are hiding the fact that they

Empathy is a popular concept these days, for many valid reasons. However, it is often conveyed as a sense of acceptance and sometimes even passiveness. What I mean is that empathy often means that you CAN’T understand someone’s perspective because it is different from yours and so therefore accept the

Content from the Learning Lab can be leveraged in many ways, from structured workshops, in-person training, individualized learning, or integration with a transformational project. In this video course, learn how you can develop your best applications with the content, with the significant chunk of the time spent demonstrating how to

I recently rediscovered a great quote from President John F. Kennedy. It was during Lehigh University’s commencement, where I was observing my daughter Emma’s graduation. The original quote is from Kennedy’s commencement speech at Yale University on June 11th, 1962, and was echoed by Lehigh’s President Joseph Helble in his

When someone utters the phrase “problem solving”, what is the first image that comes to mind? For most people, those words immediately take you into problem solving tools and templates. This is because many of us have gone through training program after training program to learn various tools. For myself,