If we could use leadership in any place most, I can think of few places more important than in understanding what is happening with our environment, energy, and how it will affect us, meaning the economy. Some conclude that since before Revelations through Malthus and beyond people have been predicting the end of the world, yet the world hasn’t ended, we have solved all problems before and we’ll solve whatever[…] Keep reading →

Walden is one of the great American books on nature and American society. Friends and longtime readers know I like it and much of its message. It criticizes the pick-a-little-talk-a-little-cheep-cheep-cheep-talk-a-lot-pick-a-little-more gossip-about-your-neighbor culture in favor of simplicity and appreciating nature. Facebook is in the news a lot. The opening sentences to Walden made me think about Facebook and the values spending time on it promotes. When I wrote the following pages,[…] Keep reading →

A recent conversation with a friend who also coaches highlighted some important observations of mastering your emotions and improving your life. We were talking about my Model and Method and how you can predictably and consistently create the emotions and motivations you want. He described how he started putting this stuff into practice. He had learned techniques to change emotions — basically to choose new environments, beliefs, and behaviors. He[…] Keep reading →

The pattern: overly intense emotions We’ve all experienced someone losing their cool around us. People flip out. They scream or raise their voices. Or, alternatively, sometimes they withdraw and act depressed or powerless. They make rash decisions. They get difficult to be around, etc. Sometimes you’re the one whose emotions get out of control. Some people describe the pattern as “being emotional.” Since I say people are always feeling emotions[…] Keep reading →

Watching people on the streets of North Korea, you see a different culture than in New York City. In three cumulative weeks in North Korea I saw almost no one hurrying or seeming like they wanted to get somewhere important. I was curious if I could find a root cause. From a leadership perspective — that is, for someone who wants to motivate and lead others — how do capitalism and[…] Keep reading →

Following up on Vietnam, leadership, and the War Remembrance Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, I wanted to include some quotes by Robert McNamara, the Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam war. As the BBC’s obituary noted, To anti-war protesters at the time, McNamara became something of a hate figure, an arrogant ultra-hawk responsible for escalating the war. He fully supported, Johnson’s decision to put ground troops into Vietnam in[…] Keep reading →

The number one defining property of leaders Defining property number one about leaders from leadership guru Michael Feiner (and my professor) is leaders ship. They get the job done. Nobody I know of whose paycheck doesn’t originate with fossil fuels or fundamentalist religion believes we are heading in a healthy direction for our environment. But we all respond to incentives and the incentives of our system — huge roads, low[…] Keep reading →