December is here, and the year is coming to a close. As the season kicks into high gear and we’re juggling our professional lives with holiday parties, band concerts, and shopping, this can be the busiest month we encounter. These next few weeks will be hectic. How will we make the most of these next [...]

I spent bits and pieces of my holiday weekend diving into How Goodness Pays, the latest book by Paul Batz and Paul Hillen from Good Leadership Press. I have been very excited to dig into this book, and this topic. What is the relationship between goodness in business and its ability to create results? I [...]

Let me start with this. My blogs are written more for me than for you. I need these reminders or I tend to get off track... Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. This has been a week where our focus has been on gratitude, all we have, and everything we have to be thankful for. It’s a time [...]

What if your greatest competitor in business was not a competitor at all? What if it was you? We encounter organizations every day, from small businesses to mid-sized entities and corporate brands, all struggling with the same issue. It’s preventing them from growing and scaling, and keeping them from creating aligned, strong cultures in their [...]

I have big goals, lots of things I want to accomplish. Outcomes I am chasing. A certain way I want to carry myself. Interwoven into all of these lofty ambitions are a myriad of distractions. My plate is full. The reality is that every day I am challenged with projects that need my attention, unexpected [...]

When things get busy, and work gets stressful, it’s easy to focus on all of the things we have to do. “I have to do this.” “I have to hit this deadline.” “I have to finish this.” When our plates are full, and there’s so much we have to do, the pressure builds and stress [...]

“Always hire people that are smarter than you.” Those are the words of Mary Shrode, who I worked for in college. I learned so many things from Mary, but this specific bit of wisdom has always stuck out to me. I used to think her advice was specific to hiring good people, but it has [...]

What do you want to be when you grow up? I have vivid memories of having people ask me that as a kid. My response? “An astronaut.” Entrepreneur and business owner were never on my list. It was the eighties – Star Wars, The Right Stuff, NASA and Shuttle launches on TV. I got a [...]

Customer service. It has been a common theme in my articles, and this past week I experienced an amazing example of that at Children’s Minnesota where my daughter was being cared for. As we are preparing to leave and bring her home, I had a quiet moment to reflect on the past week here at [...]

This article is going to be short and sweet. I am writing it from my daughter’s hospital room. She’s sick, not deathly ill, but enough to have been admitted to Children’s Hospital in Minneapolis. I am hoping her stay is only a few days long. Here’s the reality of where I’m at now. As a [...]