Now that I’m in my sixties, I find myself reflecting on the strange journey of my life. If I zoom out, it seems to have moved through three major phases: The Good Bill, The Bad Bill, and the Better Bill. Bill #1 I grew up in a lower-middle-class household in an...
Risk-taking is critical to business success. But the starting point for taking smart risks should be in action, not action. Come on, you might be thinking, let’s fast‐forward to where the action is. Risk‐taking is James Bond throttling a motorcycle off a cliff and...
In early 1960, Dr. Frances Kelsey was given her first assignment as a new employee with the FDA. After being on the job for only one month, she was asked to evaluate an application for a new drug by the pharmaceutical company Richardson-Merrell. The drug, being...
Reward Courageous Behavior, Not Just Successful Outcomes It is important to differentiate between a successful outcome and a courageous act. Being courageous, by definition, means to take on challenges despite the potential for failure. Courageous workers do, in fact,...
Sometimes the best way for a leader to reveal how passionately they care about an issue is to get very, very angry. I am not suggesting that a leader should use anger to intimidate people. Quite the contrary. The kind of anger I’m speaking of often enlists people to...
People often ask me how I define courage. My usual response is that what matters more is how you define courage. What does courage look like to you? Who are some courageous role models in your own life? When an organization brings me in to build workplace courage, one...
You hear a lot about the importance of metrics in organizations. When it comes to behavior and performance, as the saying goes, you get what you measure. It’s also said that you can’t manage what you can’t measure. While it is important for leaders to make...
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