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@corporateintel
The Lives We Touch
I’ve been thinking a lot this year about what we do. Receive Books. Sell books. Ship books. Process the accounting for receiving, selling, and shipping books. Sounds rather straightforward, yet it’s only the stencil for a rich tapestry. Behind the scenes, as a company we hire people, train people, pay people for the work they do. We help to build careers, share ideas with each other, learn from…
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Do You Care?
Here are a few marvels of bad business practices I’ve experienced in the past month: In the middle of a presentation pitching me for a strategic business services contract, the presenter nonchalantly said the words: “We don’t really need this business.” He didn’t get it. I reviewed two proposals for a project: one a two-pager with one paragraph personalized and the balance consisting of the…
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World Series Reflections: 2025 Edition
You might have noticed I’ve published fewer blog posts this year. The political climate has made it hard to write about things that seem trivial in comparison. I’ve found it difficult to comment on news of the day without adding divisiveness to the national dialogue, yet unsettling to try to ignore it with distanced topics. I suspect I’ll resume my regular cadence at some point. I’m not sure…
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A Wright Brothers Moment
Like most business leaders these days, I am obsessed with the rapid evolution of artificial intelligence. Not a day goes by without the promise or threat of AI dominating the headlines. There is insurmountable prognostication from pundits on all sides of observation — thinkers, doers, computer scientists, investors, executives, academics, journalists, policy-makers, and just regular folks — about…
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Don’t Yell at the Pilot
If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know I spend a lot of time on planes. When you fly a lot or spend a hunk of time at airports, you observe human behavior in many of its less magnificent expressions. There’s no way around it — the more you fly, the more likely things are to go wrong. It’s a numbers game. Take 100 flights, and if just 5% of them don’t go as planned, that’s five bad…
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Bringing Out The Best In Us
As we struggle through a difficult time of turmoil and division, I’m reminded that one of the least tangible yet most important responsibilities of leaders is to bring out the best in others. When we think about business leadership, we often think about strategy, alignment of goals, proper resource allocation, facilitating healthy debate around key issues, and maintaining team focus on…
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"Tune Out The Noise"
In lieu of a broader blog post this month, I’m sharing a link to a documentary film recently released on YouTube entitled “Tune Out the Noise.” It was featured in the Wall Street Journal this past weekend and tells the story of Dimensional Fund Advisors (DFA), a pioneering investment firm born out of exhaustive academic research at the University of Chicago. That graduate school of business, now…
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What Does Winning Look Like?
If you’ve ever been in a planning meeting with me, you are familiar with this question: What does winning look like? This is how I like to frame decisions around initiatives we are considering. If we can define success in advance, we will know if we achieve it. If we have no idea what winning looks like before we commit resources to a project, how do we know if it was worth it once we deliver the…
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Knowing You Are There
It has been a harrowing start to 2025. The change in Presidential administrations has further divided the nation. My own sense of the shared values that I presumed were unquestionable leaves me confused. I can’t make sense of the logic patterns laying the foundation for our future. The disorientation of those with opposing views seems to be intentional, and sadly, effective. Closer to home, the…
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Rage On
It’s a strange way to end a strange year. About a decade ago I wrote a book about an internet uprising in support of a pair of unlikely criminals who kidnapped a pair of executives after accidentally killing a businessperson during the abduction. In hindsight, it’s a bit eerie given current events. The book is called This Is Rage. It’s a novel of outlandish observations and counterintuitive…
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Insist on Honesty
I have learned with age that part of life is navigating past disillusionment. With humility we recommit to resilience. The rules have clearly changed on us. What we thought we learned was dependably true no longer seems so. Defeat is a temporary condition as long as we choose to continue to advocate for character, integrity, and justice. There is no silencing honesty and lies will always be…
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You Must Vote
This post will be short and to the point. If you haven’t voted already, you must do so before Election Day. Who am I to tell you what you must do? I’m your fellow citizen. Your vote is equal to mine. If my vote matters, so does yours. Almost exactly two years ago at this time, I wrote a piece called Ten Bad Reasons Not to Vote. There is no reason for me to write it again. I don’t have more to…
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How Sure Are You?
Lately I’ve been struck by a surprising phenomenon finding its way into all kinds of discussions. That would be the expression of certainty. It seems increasingly in many of the conversations I’m having that others have reached conclusions they feel no further need to revisit. It’s more than certainty. It’s absolute certainty. Here are some varied examples: Let me tell you what the Fed is…
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A Brief Reflection on Hope
One of the most rewarding moments of my life came when my wife started teaching one of my books in her college classroom. It wasn’t something I asked her to do or ever expected. She decided on her own that my short business parable, Endless Encores, was a good fit for her English language learners to be exposed to my particular take on management practices. I can’t well enough convey the joy I…
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Getting Your Shot
This month Kamala Harris got a step closer to one of the most coveted jobs in the world. It was anything but a predictable path. The preceding weeks were filled with anxiety and uncertainty. Through it all she remained fiercely loyal to her boss and the inside circle that provided her with the opportunity to someday be considered for the gig in the spotlight. Without much trumpeting, the door…
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Easing Up on Advice
When I started writing this blog more than thirteen years ago, I never intended for it to be an advice column. The tagline has always been “Ideas, Business, Stories.” Sometimes it’s not about business, sometimes I fail to shape a decent story, but I always try to center the content around ideas, which comes first for a reason. Nothing in these words other than keeping me in practice between books…
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Staying Forever Young
May you build a ladder to the stars And climb on every rung May you stay forever young Those lyrics were written by Bob Dylan around 1973. I was in the sixth grade when it was released, so hey, I fit the bill. If I could quote the entire song here without violating copyright, I wouldn’t have to write the rest of this blog post. There you go, blame the copyright laws for making me try to find…
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