Want to learn and practice one of the most effective leadership techniques? Then join me for a workshop, Wednesday, September 30th at 6:30pm in midtown, and get a copy of the #1 bestselling leadership book included! From the announcement from the Columbia Business School Alumni Club (everyone is welcome): The Workshop Committee of the Columbia Business School Alumni Club invites you to a workshop on Marshall Goldsmith’s FEEDFORWARD hosted by[…] Keep reading →

Academia has some serious problems. I give a lot of talks to graduate students on what they can do after graduate school, though the following applies to undergraduates too. Many of them are worried about finding jobs. I grab their attention every time with this question: When I was getting my PhD in physics, I thought the only fields I could go into were academia to become a professor, industry[…] Keep reading →

A reader sent me an article in the New York Times called “Rethinking Work.” It began, “HOW satisfied are we with our jobs?” and continued about polls about job satisfaction and various people’s views on work, implying we should think about work differently—we like work less for money and more for intrinsic reward. The author is a psychology professor. Articles like this come out all the time. I’m glad academics[…] Keep reading →

Over lunch Frances described to me her background. I had wondered how she got started, why when the CEO of Ford, Alan Mulaly, gave her a car, she picked it up near Pittsburgh. She told me about growing up near there and going to the University of Pittsburgh. If I remember right, she didn’t finish. It struck me because she is yet another prominent leader who didn’t graduate college. She’s[…] Keep reading →

“To serve is to live.” Frances Hesselbein had the fastest, clearest, most direct, and most meaningful answer of anyone I remember asking her passion. Five minutes into our pre-lunch conversation and she went right to the point. Experience and, I believe, only experience enables people to encapsulate great meaning in a minimum of words. I was immediately struck by the power and meaning in these few short words: “to serve[…] Keep reading →

The college course catalog fascinated me—hundreds of courses in dozens of subjects from amazing teachers. I wanted to take them all! Choosing four or five course from them was wonderful torture. Choosing which to take wasn’t nearly as hard as choosing which not to. I used to think, “I’ll take these two courses … which will set me up for this major … which will set me up for this[…] Keep reading →

I once read that the difference between activities that cool kids do and uncool kids do is that uncool kids’ activities tend to be based in rules and cool kids’ less so. I don’t know how you’d verify the idea, but I found exploring it told me about myself. Uncool kids play chess, which has clear rules. You can count the possible states. Cool kids play football. Football has rules,[…] Keep reading →