There is something I keep noticing in the conversations I’ve been having with colleagues and clients this month. The pattern is consistent enough that I think it belongs here, in the wider community. For years, I was the person with the colour-coded planner, the non-negotiable morning routine, and the running list of serious, ambitious things […]
Behind this button is the accumulation of a lifetime of work. Nearly twenty books, countless lectures and papers, and who knows how many notes. Written and spoken by one of the world’s smartest brains. (Not my superlative. That’s straight from Forbes.) Ask anything. And listen. Really listen. To the answer. Mind-blowing. Ai Richard I’m […]
Doris dropped the F-bomb late last year. She was 98. It landed exactly as intended! I just got back from a couple of weeks in the far north of Ontario, where we celebrated my mother-in-law’s 99th trip around the sun. She still lives in her own home. She has all her marbles. Every. Single. One. […]
Provocative question, I know. But I recently did this exercise and was genuinely blown away. I want to walk you through it. First, full credit where it’s due. This isn’t my work. It belongs to a brilliant fellow named Ant Blair. You can find him at antblair.com. He’s currently updating his website and programs, so […]
Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia and arguably the most powerful man in the current AI revolution, said something quietly devastating to students at Cambridge University recently. “Intelligence is about to be a commodity.” He wasn’t being pessimistic. He was being precise. The thing we’ve spent decades credentialing, testing, and competing over, y’know, our raw […]
Last week I told you about failing the GMAT and feeling like a misfit. About learning that intelligence comes in forms our education system doesn’t measure or value. This week, I want to talk about Steve Jobs. But not the Steve Jobs you think you know. In 1995, Jobs sat down for a raw, unfiltered […]
(Why We Need Misfits to Save Us) For the longest time, my biggest regret was failing the GMAT. Not because I desperately wanted an MBA. Because that exam was my ticket to an executive MBA program, as a mature student, fully paid for by my employer. That failure proved something I’d suspected my entire life: […]
Every January, they’ll sell you the same thing with a new label. New strategies. New frameworks. New ways to scale faster, optimize harder, extract more efficiently. The world treats each calendar flip like collective amnesia — as if everything we knew last year is suddenly obsolete. I fell for it for decades; I bet you […]
The month of November is always special for me because it’s the time when hunting and fishing activities typically slow down. I know this because I scheduled my wedding around the hunting excursions of family and friends. It’s always very quiet in the third week of November. Our wedding feast was very dull and reflected […]
“The market demands higher returns.” You’ve heard it. Maybe you’ve said it. My journey in the C-suite spanned 30 years, and not once did the market come knocking on my door. But you know who did? Private equity firms with term sheets. Activist investors with 2% stakes and PowerPoint decks. But never the stock […]