Sometimes you meet those people who distill information down in such a way that it feels obvious. One day I hope to be one of those people.
Recently in a conversation with leaders we were talking about resistance to change and one of the leaders had a formula that resonated with me.
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In my backyard I have two trees that are young and still seeking to take strong hold in the desert.
At the bottom of the tree were little saplings that looked very healthy. They were present early in the springtime as little buds and by the time I did anything about them it was nearly a whole tree by itself at the root of the trunk.
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On a recent star tour in Bryce Canyon, I had the opportunity to look through several high-powered telescopes.
Some of these telescopes were almost as big as I am, and all required a step ladder to get to the eye piece and see the object it was directed at in space.
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My friend shared with me a habit that I believe has been the primary contributor to her success in business, today she is responsible for large business at Microsoft.
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Recently I attended a Summit where all the individuals in our organization got together (many of us in-person) to connect and learn.
An observation I had while talking to several different colleagues is that there is an almost natural or default behavior to return to the way things used to be before COVID. What was “muscle memory” is coming back to all of us as we come back to the office. The challenge that this presents is that our default behavior completely disregards everything we have learned from our COVID experience.
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There are few companies on earth that can say the following and have it actually be real. Microsoft is one of these companies.
(more…)We are not charter constrained, we are leadership constrained.
This week I had a conversation with a colleague that helped me uncover a blind spot I had. I have been studying and thinking about what I have been calling “purpose driven leadership”.
The concept is this. When you do the hard internal and personal work of why you are here on the planet you have discovered your purpose. This is much larger than just one area of your life. It encompasses all that you must contribute to the world.
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Sometimes when having a conversation with a leader you get a nugget of wisdom that changes the way you think. Charlotte Yarkoni did this for me recently.
I asked Charlotte a question that went like this; the last few years have been full of uncertainty, what have you done to create clarity for your team and organization?
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Several years ago I was in Copenhagen Denmark with my wife, and we were going through a Danish furniture museum. The Dutch (and Scandinavian’s) are famous for their timeless furniture designs. There is a decent chance you have some type of furniture in your home right now that was inspired by designs from these Scandinavian designers.
I was particularly curious about how one could be so consistent in a design and have the design resonate with people for decades to come. There was a plaque that I read that contained an idea that has stuck with me ever since I read it.
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Behavior change is hard. This month I read in a book called The Joy of Leadership about a tactic that can help us with the changes we want to make in our lives.
There are moments in each one of our lives where we feel particularly inspired to change something. Several years back, as I have written before my wife and I wanted to have a family motto and incorporated deep meaning for us. That motto became “Nicholls Climb Mountains”. Our kids were quite young at the time, and I wanted this to stick so I created a logo / image / icon to help us all remember our family motto and to act accordingly.
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I teach and invite people to act. Proud husband, father and amateur pizzaiolo