Leadership

Blog / Leadership / Tips

You can plan good times. The best times just happen.

I think the title of this one says it all. A lesson in leadership -- not necessarily business leadership, but leading in social occasions: You can plan good times. The best times just happen. I think these words a lot, but especially during the Manila trip that ended up going to Boracay. Looking back I see I specifically didn't plan any details of what to do in Manila before arriving. I just contacted the people involved and made sure we had flexibility in the schedule. Then when the Boracay opportunity arose, I knew we could do it. The result? The vacation ofÂ a lifetime providing memories that will endure forever. At a low cost for that matter. Actually, I should specify: the best times just…

August 28, 2012

Blog / Leadership

More on power, leadership, lawlessness, justice, and amnesty

The New Yorker published a piece, "The Fairness Trap," echoing the issues I wrote on yesterday in the context of the U.S. foreclosure and Greek economic crises. In both cases, people's desire to punish people conflicted with clearly better economic solutions, according to the author. He talks about fairness, basically the same concept as justice -- reacting to emotions like outrage, indignation, and self-righteousness over agreeing on criteria to evaluate future outcomes on and trying to achieve the best one based on those criteria. A major problem with fairness, justice, outrage, indignation, self-righteousness, and the like is their subjectivity. We may personify justice as holding scales, but no scale can evaluate when an outcome or behavior is right or wrong, just or unjust, fair or…

August 25, 2012

Blog / Freedom / Leadership / NorthKorea

Power, leadership, lawlessness, justice, and amnesty

I'm going to present an over-simplified case related to issues many of us face in much smaller contexts. The goal is to learn from simple hypothetical cases to build experience for more complex, real-life cases. Normally I separate my North Korea posts from leadership ones, but they overlap here, along with my being in China now. One of the greater challenges the world faces is how to bring some kind of justice, or at least rule of law, to the North Korean regime. I think any community in the world not directly benefiting from the North Korean government's behavior would condemn it and consider punishment appropriate. This raises a challenge: because the regime holds all the power locally, nobody can bring them to justice. Because…

August 24, 2012

The Leaders in Software and Art Conference, October 16

Art / Blog / Leadership

The Leaders in Software and Art Conference, October 16

Savvy readers will notice the conference mentioned in the title covers two big topics of this blog -- leadership and art. I've twice spoken at Leaders in Software and Art events, helped host another, and attended many others (a video of my work is currently on the LISA site's front page). The organizer, Isabel Draves, has been building the events, consistently assembling artists and technologists to speak, network, and share about art and technology. (Her husband, Scott, creates just about the most amazing computer-based art I've ever seen.) After many successful monthly salons, she's finally making the first big LISA conference, assembling a great set of speakers. I expect this event will be as Isabel plans -- a TED conference for the overlap of technology…

August 21, 2012

My essays for getting into an Ivy League business school in 23 days

Blog / Education / Entrepreneurship / Leadership / My Favorite Posts / Tips

My essays for getting into an Ivy League business school in 23 days

Here are my Columbia Business School application essays, to complete the series on getting into business school in 23 days. I edited them slightly, mainly to take out personal details. In the optional essay 5, I can see I was blatantly name-dropping Columbia Business School Professors and my experience at the school. I think I could have used more subtlety. My graduate school stipend -- what I lived on in Manhattan for about four years -- surprises me to this day. I think the number was accurate, but wonder if the first number might have been a 2 instead of a 1. Anyway, here are the essays. Essay 1 1. What are your short-term and long-term post-MBA goals? How will Columbia Business School help you…

August 20, 2012

Blog / Education / Entrepreneurship / Leadership / Tips

My background for getting into an Ivy League business school in 23 days

Yesterday I posted about the process I stumbled into for getting into an Ivy League business school in 23 days. How to read this post Today I'll talk about the credentials that made it possible. But please recognize, the point of these posts is not merely to show you how to get into business school, but to show you that you can combine whatever you have in your past into something bigger than you expect. You have to be aware of the possibilities and ready to act on them. If you are insecure and want to justify why can't succeed, you'll read this post to see how other people can achieve big things because they have advantages you don't. I used to look at things…

August 19, 2012

I started at an Ivy League business school 23 days after deciding to apply. Here’s how.

Blog / Education / Entrepreneurship / Leadership / My Favorite Posts / Tips

I started at an Ivy League business school 23 days after deciding to apply. Here’s how.

On December 10, 2004 I decided to apply to business school. I had written no essays, taken no GMAT, reviewed no school's web site or application process, and asked no one for a recommendation. On January 2, 2005, 23 days later, I began orientation at Columbia Business School (ranked #5 by Forbes, Economist, and Financial Times). I got my MBA the following May, less than eighteen months from deciding to apply. Prep schools (such as Manhattan GMAT and Kaplan) recommend starting the application process eighteen months before starting classes. I completed my entire application and degree in less time than they recommend for just applying. Business school ended up one of the best experiences of my life, a turning point improving it in many ways…

August 18, 2012

Awareness / Blog / Leadership

The one person you can never see from another person’s perspective is yourself

The one person you can never see from another person's perspective is yourself. Ironic because that's the one person you'd most like to see from another person's perspective. Everyone else sees you that way, so it would be nice to see how other people see us. You always hear stories about people who think they're great leaders, but unknown to them, they always scowl or their voices don't sound like they think they do or people undermine them behind their backs. As a coach, offering an external perspective -- a mirror -- is one of the more valuable services I can offer, even if I give no active advice but merely passive feedback. As a regular person, like anyone else I wish I could see…

August 12, 2012

Art / Blog / Entrepreneurship / Freedom / Leadership

More on becoming a superstar

I wanted to comment on a quote in yesterday's post about becoming a superstar that illustrates an aspect important for the aspiring star -- you. And, again, superstardom can mean breakout success in any area -- starting a company, making CEO, being a superstar boyfriend, girlfriend, or spouse, etc. A musician I quoted yesterday commented that American Idol's shooting-the-moon style isn't really about music. It's about all the bad aspects of the music business — the arrogance of commerce, this sense of 'I know what will make this person a star; artists themselves don't know.' I've only seen a few minutes of the show, but it looks like the judges speak authoritatively (not that they have authority, just that they speak that way) on what…

August 9, 2012

Art / Blog / Entrepreneurship / Freedom / Leadership

How to become a superstar

This post is about breakout success in any area -- starting a company, making CEO, being a superstar boyfriend, girlfriend, or spouse, etc -- but I'll put it in the language of entertainment superstardom. I'll leave translating it to the language of the field you want to succeed in as an exercise. But I guarantee it applies. Superstars make it look so easy. They dress how they want, say what they want, and do what they want and the world loves them for it. Everyone else has to think about what they say and do all the time -- and then gets judged for it. How do they do it? Building a solid foundation I'm conservative about hitting it big. This quote on a Bruce…

August 8, 2012

Awareness / Blog / Leadership / Tips

How far should I develop myself? It’s hard!

A client asked me about doing exercises to develop leadership and social skills. He pointed out most people don't do them. Some people do them differently. He's been doing them a while and has seen some progress, but knows he has a long way to go. He asked my thoughts on how much he should do. I wrote the following. I look at leadership and social skills, leadership, and self-awareness exercises like learning any major life skill, like playing a sport, learning to dance, to play music, etc. In sports you have to run drills. You have to run sprints, sometimes in the rain, sometimes when you don't think you have it in you. You can skip those things, but in sports you compete, so…

August 4, 2012

Blog / Entrepreneurship / Leadership

Facebook’s woes and what it could have done instead

If you know me, you'd expect Facebook's woes to mean the problems Facebook inflicts on its users who haven't left it yet. After all, leaving Facebook is easy and fun. Yes, they're reaching a billion users, but I'm no longer one of them and once you leave the site seems weird, like why would you do business with such a creepy company. From the New York Times, Facebook Shares Plummet in an Earnings Letdown: "Unhappy with Facebook's first financial report as a public company Thursday, investors fled the stock in droves..." Most of you probably expect the drop resulted from my calling the company creepy and you may be right, but I think the greater problems come from inside Facebook, and decisions they made based…

August 1, 2012

Blog / Creativity / Education / Entrepreneurship / Leadership

What works in X web page mind map

Following up a comment on my post on the What Works in X web page genius idea, I created a mind map as a rough outline for the site to illustrate it better. It's only a rough outline, but I think a good start. Copying from my response to the reader's comment I envision people at What Works in X sharing anecdotes of things they've done at a higher level, like how they got hired by doing something different or got into North Korea or things like that... available in any area. Of course, I put the idea up for others to do with it what they want. I'm as happy to inspire someone else's slightly different vision as for them to implement mine. Also,…

July 29, 2012

Blog / Creativity / Education / Entrepreneurship / Leadership

Another genius business idea: the “What Works in X” web page

Following up on yesterdays' genius business idea for a book series of successful solved problems in many fields, today let's look at a web page doing something similar. Instead of making it just like a book, let's take advantage of the web's interactivity and let users create content. It's based on the principles of the Art of What Works (the book I mentioned the other day) The product A web site of user-written anecdotes of successful things they did, categorized by field -- eventually, the global repository of solved problems in every field, free for anyone to access or contribute to. Once populated with content, the main use of the site would be for anyone with a problem to solve. They would log in, search…

July 27, 2012

Blog / Creativity / Education / Entrepreneurship / Leadership

Another genius business idea: the “What Works in X” book series

For the first genius business idea (the series I mentioned a couple days ago) I propose a book series based on the principles of the Art of What Works (the book I mentioned yesterday). The product A series of books like the "for dummies" and "for complete idiot" series, all with the same dimensions, cover design and color scheme, tone, writing style, etc called "What works inX", like "What Works in Selling Your House", "What Works in Nursing", "What Works in Teaching High School", or "What Works in Starting Your Own Restaurant." Each book contains anecdotes of people achieving success in the field that you can learn from -- a series of solved problems you can use to solve your problems. The fundamental principle is…

July 26, 2012

Blog / Creativity / Education / Entrepreneurship / Leadership

The Art of What Works

One of Columbia Business School's most popular courses in recent years has been in strategy, called Napoleon's Glance, named after a book by the instructor, Bill Duggan. Former students I've talked to rave about it. I was fortunate to do an independent study with him before his course exploded in popularity. Now it's so successful I doubt he could devote that kind of attention to a single student. Despite the course's immense popularity at one of the world's great business schools, I was more influenced by his book The Art of What Works. This excerpt from the back cover gets the gist of the book well for me, especially Jack Welch's quote: While every business situation you confront is unique, it is invariably made of…

July 25, 2012

Leadership / NorthKorea

What do you think of “leaders” whose people suffered

It's hard not to think little or disparagingly of "leaders" who ruled and gained position not through merit but by accident of birth or through having little confidence (I read Russia installed Kim Il Sung over others more competent). Through no malevolence, you wish they could have known or even experienced some of the suffering they contributed to, even if they didn't intentionally create it, let alone if they intentionally create it. It makes you wonder what they thought of what they did. Did they realize the effects of their actions? Did the system shield them from learning? Were they crazy? Did they like what happened? Is it possible they could have done nothing else? Could I misunderstand? These are my thoughts when I find…

July 23, 2012

Blog / Leadership

Leadership, personal development, choosing to care, and emotional pain

Devoting yourself to something means emotions can get attached. This happens as much in professional leadership as in personal lives. In professional environments you can choose to care deeply about your work or not. Entrepreneurs can devote themselves so much as to lose everything in a project. Athletes and teams that come in second often seem more crushed, despite being the second best in the world, than those who merely qualified to compete and finished far behind. And who among us doesn't know the pain of a relationship ending? Success means you will fail along the way. Nobody wins every game they play. No relationship lasts forever (this isn't news to you, but at the very least one of you will die first). All companies…

July 22, 2012

Awareness / Blog / Leadership / Tips

You don’t find your passion, you create it

A client asked how to find your passion (in the context of relationships, as you'll see). I wrote the following (slightly edited). -------------------------------- You don't find some single latent passion within you, if only you can find it. You create it. What is passion? It's powerful emotion. Emotion doesn't come from out there. It comes from in here. How do you create something in here? Not by looking out there. By growing, learning, building, exploring, and developing skills in here. Stuff out there gives you something to work with, but your passion is inside you. You have a zillion things you like, each of which could grow to into one of, or the, overarching source of passion that drives your life. Until I found out…

July 15, 2012

Awareness / Blog / Leadership

Every moment counts

If you like improving your life enough to read my stuff, you probably know about a study (probably one of many) that found that people who won the lottery and people who had accidents that left them in wheelchairs both returned to the same emotional levels a year later. What do you conclude from such results? How much can we misunderstand ourselves if winning the lottery doesn't help out lives? Or if spinal injuries don't? These results sounds counterintuitive. Most of us would prefer winning the lottery to losing control of our arms and legs, or even just not winning the lottery. But if winning the lottery doesn't improve our lives, why do we feel like we'd rather win than not? And what importance, if…

July 14, 2012

Blog / Leadership / Tips

Public speaking: one way to captivate audiences

Between my talks and seminars and the university courses I've taught, I get to speak in public a fair amount. We all know one of the main challenges of public speaking is keeping the audience engaged -- a bigger one being how to recapture an audience's attention if you lose it. Here's a trick that works every time. Although doing it can challenge you more than you think you can handle (another reason to do it) if you aren't comfortable with yourself. I learned it giving talks on entrepreneurship -- mainly talking about starting Submedia. Sometimes my talks required talking about troubling times -- when the company nearly went bankrupt, when the Board argued and fought, when we couldn't make important deadlines, when funding sources…

July 12, 2012

Art / Blog / Education / Leadership

A leadership dream

Since posting on lessons leaders can learn from method acting, I've been thinking about parallels between acting and leadership -- in particular how acting changed when Constantine Stanislovski led changing the art to expressive and internal from impressive and external. "Impressive and external" means the actor tried to impress the audience with outward showiness. "Expressive and internal" means the actor tries to find emotions inside and express them. You know what acting before looked like. Jon Lovitz and John Lithgow mocked that style on Saturday Night Live in its Master Thespian sketches in the late 80s (this transcript of a sketch made me laugh after all these years). I haven't studied the history of acting, but I think the comedy sketch gets some of the…

July 8, 2012

Blog / Freedom / Leadership / NorthKorea / Tips

Spending less improves your life

Preface: I started writing this blog about how cutting personal costs (of any resource, including time, money, energy, attention, etc) improves your personal life. Rereading it I realized it overlapped so much with what leaders can do in business, I'll tag it leadership too. Translating the post into business-speak I'll leave as an exercise to the reader. You can probably do it on the fly. People who know me in person know I work very little at a job -- like a day a week, sometimes more in crunch times, which happen once a year or so. When they hear I work so little, they first ask, usually indirectly, where I make enough money to live on. I view going this direction first as a…

June 30, 2012

Blog / Leadership / Tips

The bigger problems you don’t consider big deals, the more important people consider you

Does the title of this post not explain itself? People who know what they're doing stay calm under pressure. Things that bother some people don't bother them. People who don't know what they're doing freak out at little things. In money terms, if you don't have enough to live on, problems on the scale of a few dollars may bother you. If you have millions, problems of a thousands of dollars may not bother you. In terms of social and leadership skills, if you don't have enough skills to get a job done, small issues will bother you. If your skills aren't enough to live on, you'll have trouble every day. People won't want to interact with you or follow you. If you have great…

June 29, 2012

Blog / Leadership / Tips

A tip for high-status behavior

A friend taught me a great lesson in how people with higher status behave compared to people with lower status. Here it is as a piece of advice What you can say in many words, say in few. What you can say in few words, say with a gesture. What you can say with a gesture, say with a subtle gesture. These words give great advice while describing the effectiveness of body language over words and subtlety over rambling. Next time you find yourself talking a lot, realize you're undermining yourself. Next time you're with someone whose status is much higher, notice their behavior. Notice yours when you have the higher status. Notice how people respond to you when you follow the advice. I bet…

June 26, 2012

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