I spent a decade in the U.S. Marine Corps as an intelligence operative and martial arts instructor. It was both some of the most formative and exciting years of my life mixed with excruciatingly long runs, incredibly high expectations, and several harrowing experiences. And it was a blast. After I resigned from the Marine Corps […]
Mastering the Signal in a World of Noise Read More »
People fixate on goals, and it’s easy to understand why. Many don’t realize there are alternatives to goals. And I’m not talking KPIs or OKRs either. To me, these are still goals, just better dressed. I’m talking something different. Imagine a tapestry of constructs that can be interwoven to better achieve progress. So today let
Goals Are Rarely Enough Read More »
Can we agree that most people are terrible at asking questions? I understand why. Promotions come because we’re quick to solve problems and arrive at answers, not for our skill at staying curious. However, what got us where we are isn’t what will get us to where we want to go next. As a leader,
Asking Better Questions And Why It Matters Read More »
Leaders, let’s talk. Being the first to speak or the person to speak the most does not make you an effective leader. It just makes you an extravert. In fact, there’s a name for this phenomenon, and it’s call the babble hypothesis. People who talk more–regardless of what they say or their intelligence–are more likely
Extraverted Leaders Are Winning Read More »
I spent a decade in the Marine Corps, and there’s a lot of about discipline that most people misunderstand. I’ve come to realize this from the number of clients who have hired me specifically to help them apply discipline to their decisions both personally and professionally First, discipline is never loud, assertive, or attention seeking.
What Is Discipline? Read More »
Are you really going to finish that book you started reading? I know it sounded interesting when you started, and I know you want to learn more. After a week of reading though, you’re only 5% through. How do people speed through books in a day or two? It’s nuts. At this rate, you’ll never
Learning for Growth: Ditching Books on Your Personal Journey Read More »
How many of us set an exceptionally high bar for ourselves, and even when we reach it, we feel like it’s not enough? We’ve climbed the corporate ladder and are now leading others, but the rungs we haven’t yet reached are the ones that really have our attention. We focus on relationships. Still, we work
Leading with Doubt: A Tool for the Insecure Overachiever Read More »
“You should be more proactive and less reactive.” How many times have you been given this feedback? I have many times, and I find it mostly confusing. Hindsight is 20/20 so it’s easy to offer up when looking at the past, but I can’t prepare for every contingency. And I can’t see the future so
A Thoughtful Rejection of Proactive Versus Reactive Read More »
A few weeks ago, I wrote about how the Marine Corps decentralizes decision making via the Rule of Three. I talked a lot about how information moves down the chain of command to those in the trenches, and a few readers reminded me that I glossed over the flow of information from the trenches to
General Mattis on the Flow of Information Read More »
Let me tell you a secret about a simple mechanism that the U.S. Marine Corps employs to decentralize decision making. The brilliance of it is in its simplicity, and I do believe it’s mostly a secret. Only once in all my years have I run across anyone who has described what I’m about to describe
How the Marine Corps Decentralizes Decision Making Read More »
