Mediocrity is a Virus, Excellence is the Cure

“Excellence is an art won by training and habituation: we do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have these because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” —Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy Many hundreds, if not…

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Power Does Not Equal Leadership

I received an email this weekend from my assistant, Robert Greenlaw, that I’d like to share with you: I’ve been mulling over this since Friday and decided to write. I watched a couple hours of inaugural ceremonies with my kids on Friday. It was fun to see and talk about the historic monuments and try…

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Managing

As we get ready to start a new year, I thought I would remind myself of my job. What is it that I am supposed to do? We often use terms like “leader” and “manager,” and we all have fancy titles like “Chief This” and “Chief That” or “Vice President of This and That.” We…

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Bees

Over dinner one night this week, one of my sons told me he was interested in keeping bees. Funny that we say we “keep” bees. More on that later. The reason he brought this up, he said, was because he knew I kept bees when I was younger. I did. I love bees. However, they…

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Legacy and Innovation

I read an article called “How to Stand on Shoulders” (https://getpocket.com/a/read/1437178321) which is about coding actually, but it got me thinking. The author used the term “Not Invented Here.” Not Invented Here Syndrome (NIHS) is a mindset or corporate culture that favors internally-developed products over externally-developed products, even when the external solution is superior. (read…

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