TOMORROW NOON eastern (9am pacific) see me live on the LEADx webinar, “Lead without authority.” LEADx told me that over 100 people have registered so far. It’s free, but you have to register. LEADx is important. They created Inc.’s annual influential list of 100 top public speakers (16 of whom have been on my podcast or I’ve been on theirs). We’ll cover a set of skills that will get you[…] Keep reading →

The Leadership and the Environment podcast team is growing, which means expanding to new ways to Develop people’s leadership and Act on the environment I’ve interviewed Ryan and Ben, the podcast’s newest teammates so you’ll get to meet them when their interviews get processed. In the meantime, we’ve organized two leadership development workshops THIS WEEK: Wednesday and Thursday, 6pm–8pm at NYU. Click these links to register and for the details,[…] Keep reading →

Joshua Spodek Uneducated at Any GPA Is the Ivy League Today Big 3 Auto of the 1960s? America’s top universities today are like America’s Big 3 car manufacturers of the 60s: hugely profitable, projecting growth for decades, the envy of the world, dominating their markets, dictating terms to customers and employees, and accelerating to bankruptcy. Cars aren’t diplomas, but besides the obvious differences between the fields, systemic similarities suggest a[…] Keep reading →

Tom Heffner, host of the Next Year Now podcast, just posted his interview of me. Tom and I got to be friends following up this podcast, based on our mutual passion for learning and practicing leadership skills, education, values, and many of the things you read about here, so you’ll hear the chemistry. Plus, he came to these areas from a science and aerospace background, as I did. As Tom[…] Keep reading →

Leadership, entrepreneurship, and other performance-based professional practices are fundamentally social and emotional. Traditional academics teaches you to comply, not to lead or take initiative. It teaches intellectual skills, which are perfect for the knowledge worker of the mid-twentieth century. Those days are gone. Today’s challenges are social and emotional—how to create relationships and learn people’s problems so you can solve them. Learning to lead, innovate, create, and solve people’s problems[…] Keep reading →

Sometimes people who want to know to lead ask directly, How do you lead? I don’t think they’re asking a question that will help them improve their leadership. You can walk and talk, but you’d be hard pressed to describe how you do it beyond generalities like “you put one foot in front of the other.” No one taught you the theory behind language or walking. You practiced until you[…] Keep reading →

10 Signs U.S. Universities Are Sabotaging Themselves Moody’s downgraded higher education to “negative.” S&P agreed. Finances aren’t the problem. Leadership is. S&P predicted a bleak future for higher education last week. Last month Moody’s downgraded the sector to from “stable” to “negative.” Leaders know financial issues usually aren’t root problems but point to them. Here are 10 signs pointing to problems among American universities independent of finance, from most obvious leading to the broadest and most important. 10. The most[…] Keep reading →