Thursday, February 25, 2010
In a sweltering room in Philadelphia, Pa. in the summer of 1787, two groups, the large and small states, fiercely debated the future structure of the government for the newly born United States of America. Generation after generation would be impacted by the outcome. But they had a problem…they just couldn’t completely agree.
After nearly two months of deliberation, the delegates finally struck the “Great Compromise” creating a unique two-part Congress: Each state would have both a representative and an equal voice. And though neither party got exactly what they wanted, their losses created one of the most successful governments in the history of the world. The leadership lesson: It pays to compromise.
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Sunday, February 21, 2010
Effective leaders can’t see dead people – but they possess a kind of sixth sense for reading those around them. During a summer internship in college I setup a number of meetings with the executives of the company to learn more about leadership. One lesson from the CEO to this day clearly stands out in my mind.
He said that his best leadership gift was his ability to know the keys to motivating each of his executives and managers.
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Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Did you know that last year 550,000 books were published? Add in blogs, Twitter, email, and Facebook, and the sheer volume of reading options becomes overwhelming. Figuring out what non-fiction to read is hard work. Even once you’ve narrowed your focus to a subject, deciding on an author or book takes precious time and effort.
Making the job still more difficult is the fact that each non-fiction book has two qualities: quality of content and quality of writing, and they’re often confused.
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Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Because of the business enlightenment in the last decade or so one would think that shady marketing tactics would be dead in most industries. They should be.
I know they’re not because today I experienced my own rip-off run-in. The two offenders were American Home Mortgage and a company called TotalProtect. Their scheme was to mail small-amount checks that, if cashed, would start an ongoing $32/month subscription. Unfortunately the skanky play was not caught at the time in the Hoyt household, and we’ve been paying the bill (as a disguised add-on to our mortgage payment) since June.
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