[This post is part of a series on “Mental models and beliefs: an exercise to identify yours.” If you don’t see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you’ll get more value than reading just this post.] Since my results surprised me, I bet your results will surprise you when you do yesterday’s exercise to record your beliefs (aka mental models or just[…] Keep reading →

Do you like music, art, literature, innovation, invention, creativity, entrepreneurship, and things like that? Then you probably liked the document I mentioned a few weeks ago about problems with copyright and how to fix them. I considered it well thought-out and felt it proposed ideas that would improve the country. I was surprised to see it coming from the type of hard-core conservative that supports corporate welfare. Until the group[…] Keep reading →

[This post is part of a series on Coaching Highlights from coaching Columbia Business School students. If you don’t see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you’ll get more value than reading just this post.] Just the structure of yesterday’s charts teaches a lot about leadership. They emerged as main tools for communicating leadership ability and guiding improvement so even if you’re[…] Keep reading →

[This post is part of a series on Coaching Highlights from coaching Columbia Business School students. If you don’t see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you’ll get more value than reading just this post.] Let’s look at part of a sample 360-degree feedback report. Today I’ll show the highlights — the summary of all the questions. Even if you’ve never had[…] Keep reading →

Society values originality and creativity in problem solving instead of getting the job done. I’ll illustrate how. Imagine you have a problem you need solved. For concreteness let’s say you need plumbing work done in your house, but it could apply to any problem, personal, professional, or otherwise. Say you ask two plumbers how they would fix the problem to decide whom to hire. The first plumber says “I have[…] Keep reading →

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[…] Keep reading →

[This post is part of a series on Communication Skills Exercises for Business and Life. If you don’t see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you’ll get more value than reading just this post.] Here are examples of two masters of voicing their self-talk, Robin Williams and (I believe) his mentor Jonathan Winters. They make great role models for what level of[…] Keep reading →