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Leadership

Lessons on Leadership: Michael Abrashoff on Turning the Worst Ship in the Navy into the Best

Michael Abrashoff was in his mid-thirties when he took command of the USS Benfold, a guided missile destroyer and one of the worst-performing ships in the navy. Despite her potency, the “dysfunctional ship had a sullen crew …

Read moreLessons on Leadership: Michael Abrashoff on Turning the Worst Ship in the Navy into the Best

Solve Problems Before They Happen by Developing an “Inner Sense of Captaincy”

Too often we reward people who solve problems while ignoring those who prevent them in the first place. This incentivizes creating problems. According to poet David Whyte, the key to taking initiative and being proactive is viewing yourself …

Read moreSolve Problems Before They Happen by Developing an “Inner Sense of Captaincy”

The Spiral of Silence

Our desire to fit in with others means we don’t always say what we think. We only express opinions that seem safe. Here’s how the spiral of silence works and how we can discover what people really think. *** Be honest: How often do you feel …

Read moreThe Spiral of Silence

Aim For What’s Reasonable: Leadership Lessons From Director Jean Renoir

Directing a film involves getting an enormous group of people to work together on turning the image inside your head into a reality. In this 1970 interview, director Jean Renoir dispenses time-tested wisdom for leaders everywhere on …

Read moreAim For What’s Reasonable: Leadership Lessons From Director Jean Renoir

Job Interviews Don’t Work

Better hiring leads to better work environments, less turnover, and more innovation and productivity. When you understand the limitations and pitfalls of the job interview, you improve your chances of hiring the best possible person for …

Read moreJob Interviews Don’t Work

Why Cross-Pollinating Your Work, Works

At Farnam Street we believe in the idea that a multidisciplinary approach to big ideas is the best way to form a deeper understanding. Some concepts will intuitively lend themselves to this type of thinking. Something like evolution is an …

Read moreWhy Cross-Pollinating Your Work, Works

Inside a Miracle: The 1980 U.S. Hockey Team

Few people know the details about one of the greatest stories in sports history. A classic David versus Goliath story that happened at the 1980 Olympics in Lake Placid when the U.S. Olympic Hockey team played the Soviets. While the U.S. …

Read moreInside a Miracle: The 1980 U.S. Hockey Team

Edward Deci: On the Relationship Between Need Fulfillment and Motivation

Edward Deci’s work on motivation is so often quoted (Dan Pink’s Drive comes to mind) that we decided to go back to the primary text by Deci himself, a book called Why We Do What We Do: Understanding Self-Motivation. The author is …

Read moreEdward Deci: On the Relationship Between Need Fulfillment and Motivation

Under One Roof: What Can we Learn from the Mayo Clinic?

The Mayo Clinic is one of the top-rated hospitals in the US and enjoys remarkable success. In this post, we consider the reasons for the Mayo Clinic’s success and what we can learn from it to apply to our own organizations. *** …

Read moreUnder One Roof: What Can we Learn from the Mayo Clinic?

Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics

Most great thinkers have speculated about the kind of leadership that might give rise to a better society, analyzing it through what’s sometimes called a “normative” lens: What should we be doing? In Leviathan, for …

Read moreWhy Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics

George Marshall’s 1920 Letter on True Leadership

“I am certain in the belief that the average man who scrupulously follows this course of action is bound to win great success.” *** George Marshall must be one of, if not the most under appreciated leaders in American history, …

Read moreGeorge Marshall’s 1920 Letter on True Leadership

Leaders and Followers, Planners and Doers

The author Marshall Goldsmith has a gift for taking classic theories and adding to them, or slightly modifying them, to construct something new and interesting. A good example of this is what he does with Situational Leadership in the book …

Read moreLeaders and Followers, Planners and Doers

Words Like Loaded Pistols: Wartime Rhetoric

Rhetoric, or the art of persuasion, is an ancient topic that’s no less relevant today. We are in a golden age of information sharing, which means you are swimming in a pool of rhetoric every day, whether you realise it or not. The …

Read moreWords Like Loaded Pistols: Wartime Rhetoric

There Are No Called Strikes and Other Lessons You Learn in Business School

Matthew Frederick teams up with Michael Preis to offer some important learnings from the world of business — which isn’t really a discipline in and of itself but rather, as they write in the introduction to 101 Things I Learned in …

Read moreThere Are No Called Strikes and Other Lessons You Learn in Business School

Creating Effective Incentive Systems: Ken Iverson on the Principles that Unleash Human Potential

The issue of setting compensation seems to be struggled with in every organization. Most are pretty lazy about it — hiring someone else to take care of it and failing to think through the incentives they’re creating. Some companies …

Read moreCreating Effective Incentive Systems: Ken Iverson on the Principles that Unleash Human Potential

Why Micromanaging Kills Corporate Culture

“The more he kept sweating the details, the less his people took ownership of their work.” *** The most important part of a company’s culture is trust. People don’t feel trusted when you micromanage and this has …

Read moreWhy Micromanaging Kills Corporate Culture

Culture Eats Strategy: Nucor’s Ken Iverson on Building a Different Kind of Company

The problem with most management, leadership, and business books is that many of them harp on the same self-evident points, overconfident in the usefulness of their prescriptions for would-be imitators. They tend to vastly underestimate the …

Read moreCulture Eats Strategy: Nucor’s Ken Iverson on Building a Different Kind of Company

The 10 Qualities of Creative Leaders

David Ogilvy was an advertising legend and perhaps the original “Mad Man.” The Unpublished David Ogilvy offers a remarkably candid glimpse of the private man behind the public image. Ogilvy was fond of lists. This one outlines the ten …

Read moreThe 10 Qualities of Creative Leaders

William McKnight: The Basic Rule of Management that Propelled 3M

In 1907 William L. McKnight joined Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Co (3M) as an assistant bookkeeper. He rose quickly through the ranks and became president in 1929 and chairman of the board in 1949. His timeless management philosophy …

Read moreWilliam McKnight: The Basic Rule of Management that Propelled 3M

The Ten Golden Rules of Leadership: Classical Wisdom for Modern Leaders

How many of today’s problems are the result of leadership? What’s lacking, the author of The Ten Golden Rules of Leadership argues, is the lack of real leadership. Here the problem may lie with a lack of deeper, broader …

Read moreThe Ten Golden Rules of Leadership: Classical Wisdom for Modern Leaders

Elon Musk on How to Tell if People Are Lying

This is a great tidbit from Elon Musk on how having job applicants explain their thinking at multiple levels helps him figure out if they really worked on the problem. If you just talk to the people on your team you can learn a tremendous …

Read moreElon Musk on How to Tell if People Are Lying

A Successful Businessperson Has to Learn to Say No

“The art of leadership is saying no, not yes. It’s very easy to say yes.” — Tony Blair Tony Blair isn’t the only one who thinks that. So does Steve Jobs and Warren Buffett. Focus is everything. One of the most …

Read moreA Successful Businessperson Has to Learn to Say No

The Last Thing We Need Right Now is a Vision Statement

In this excerpt from Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance?, Louis V. Gerstner Jr. says something I wish tech companies would heed. I said something at the press conference that turned out to be the most quotable statement I ever made: “What …

Read moreThe Last Thing We Need Right Now is a Vision Statement

Six Common Strategy Traps

Strategy could be the most over-used word since leadership. How many strategies can one organization have? A lot of people say “strategy” when they really mean a goal or objective. This is a strategy trap. One of the best books …

Read moreSix Common Strategy Traps
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