November 15, 2009
A number of years ago, I learned a painful lesson by wasting my time and a client's money by treating the external symptoms and ignoring the underlying disease.
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October 4, 2009
With all seats contested, once again voters will be faced with choices in the City Council primary Tuesday. Paradoxically, candidates campaign as individuals, but in our system their effectiveness is dependent on their ability to work as a team and...
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July 5, 2009
Although a few may deny it, leaders in both public and private organizations are deeply concerned about their legacies and stewardship. How will they be remembered? Have they been good stewards of their organizations and the people? Is either better or...
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April 26, 2009
I first noticed it in the Army. I'd been in boot camp for two hours when, along with a couple hundred of my fellow recruits, I was herded into a line to enjoy my first Army free lunch.
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March 22, 2009
The first wave of layoffs devastated the textile manufacturing base of our region and the second is tearing apart the financial services infrastructure of Charlotte's economy. That's just the very tip of the iceberg. We are not only experiencing a global...
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February 22, 2009
Having confided in me that the current layoff provided a good opportunity to get rid of those "overpaid do-nothings" in marketing, the newly appointed general manager stood on a table in the employee cafeteria and addressed his new employees. This is a pa...
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January 4, 2009
In the Chinese calendar, 2009 is the year of the ox. Given the state of the economy, a more fitting representation for this new year would be a chicken. Chicken Little, to be more exact. In the tale, Chicken Little misinterprets an acorn falling on her he...
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December 14, 2008
From November’s historic election to the ongoing meltdown of our financial system, we are living in “interesting” times. Here are the Top 10 items on my holiday gift list for this noteworthy year.
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November 9, 2008
It's finally over. After more than a year of primaries, debates, conventions, speeches, prognostication, talk show jokes, "Saturday Night Live" spoofs and nauseating waves of deceptive and shallow attack ads, we, for better or worse, now have a new presid...
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October 26, 2008
In a past consulting project, I encountered a feisty but creative branch manager whose firm had just been taken over by a large corporation. The only adornment in his Spartan office was a large, framed caricature of a cow on the wall behind his desk. What...
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September 7, 2008
After his considerable professional and academic credentials were painstakingly extolled during his introduction by the firm's president, a newly hired director of research both astonished and endeared himself to his future employees by slowly tearing his...
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August 10, 2008
In his 1971 hit song, “Imagine,” John Lennon asked his fellow “dreamers” to imagine a world of sharing with no hunger, greed, wars, countries, religions or possessions. The utopian idealism of the ’70s has suffered many reality checks over the y...
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July 13, 2008
The rallying cry for change by our current political candidates conjures up the familiar metaphor of rearranging the deck chairs while the Titanic is sinking. A less trite and perhaps more apt metaphor was developed by a group of managers when I asked the...
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