Blog

I was backstage at a large hotel ballroom getting ready to keynote a large conference. Wondering around in the “employees only” back of the house,” I stumbled onto a small hotel employee meeting. When I heard the meeting leader, obviously a supervisor, ask: “Tell me...

Portals are cool concepts. They are like doorways or secret passageways into another world. The wall outlet is such a portal. It sits passively on a room wall. But, plug an electric cord into it and the lamp will come on, the hair dryer will blow, or the oven will be...

My son and his fiancé elected to get married in a large antique church in mid-town Atlanta. Their choice of church was driven in part by the magnificent stained glass windows in the sanctuary. Just at the “I do” part of their late afternoon ceremony, the setting sun...

We sometimes credit Christopher Columbus with discovering America in 1492. But, frankly America was not lost. If there was a discovery involved, Leif Erikson had taken care of it 500 years earlier. The truth be told, Christopher was not hunting for a new world. He was...

What do you get when you cross a rocker with a long wooden plank that bounces up and down like the rocking motion of a horse carriage? It is a joggling board (Google it!!). It was very popular on the porches of antebellum homes in the Deep South during the pre-civil...

Outback Western Wear in Magnolia, Texas, is famous for its wide selection of western gear, especially western boots. Western-wear fans in Texas take their boots very seriously, often spending a considerable amount of time getting a perfect fit, the right heel and toe,...

I was waiting for an appointment with my insurance agent. In the corner of the reception area was a collection of toys. A woman was also in the reception area and her two young boys were giggling over the toys. It was not loud; it was actually refreshingly comical. As...

A CEO met with her senior staff and posed a typical CEO question: “What strategies and tactics would you recommend if we needed to increase our productivity by 10%?” Her executives quickly outlined belt-tightening steps and “do more with less” recommendations. Then...

Making change happen in organizations would be a lot easier if there weren’t those pesky resistors. There are the angry types filled with long memories of pain. There are the pessimistic types who would throw a wet blanket on the most carefully planned party. Finally,...

My grandmother was a wonderful person. And, she was blessed with many grandchildren. It created a bit of challenge for her at Christmas time, especially as we all got older. Then, she hit on a solution--all the girls would get scarves; all the boys would get ties....

Their sheer size alone is a case study in scale. Over 250 million customers visit one of 11,000 Wal-Mart stores in 27 countries each week. That means that 1/3 of the U.S. population crosses the threshold of a Wal-Mart store every single week. They have 2.2 million...