Anytime a person must gather information, there is no substitute for asking the right questions. Asking the right questions means asking someone to teach you things you do not know, or correcting you if your knowledge is distorted. We see forms of questions all around us: a manager interviews a job applicant, a detective talks […]

Curiosity starts early. Children throw cups from highchairs over and over, testing gravity and their parents. They repeat the same noises and ask the same questions, exploring sound and language. When everything is new, there are countless experiments to run. The answers are awe-inspiring: sunsets, gravity, hula hoops, and bugs. As more and more questions […]

Eight years ago, Craig Ross achieved a career milestone. He became the majority owner, CEO, and president of Verus Global, a leadership development organization based in Littleton, Colorado. There was no time to celebrate because of declining profits and growth. “For the first time in my career, I was asking questions I’d never asked,” Ross says. […]

Solomon was said to be the most successful king that Israel ever had—renowned for his wisdom and his riches. His heir Rehoboam, not so much. Of the 12 tribes of Hebrews that constituted the nation of Israel, 10 revolted under Rehoboam’s reign. Later leaders would manage shaky alliances. But after Rehoboam, it was no longer […]

Your intuition is a lot like Shawn Spencer. If you’re not familiar with the hit TV show Psych, Spencer is a private detective with a twist: he has everyone convinced he is psychic. In fact, his supernatural, detecting power is nothing more than exceptional attention-to-detail. How is this like intuition? Though people are apt to […]

If thou gaze long into an algorithm, the algorithm will also gaze into… well, not exactly thee, right? More like a patchy portrait of your likeness churned out by a mimeograph low on ink—sharply delineated in a few areas, sure, but hazy and obscure in many others. Yet close enough in the broad strokes to […]

You will never make a fully-informed decision. Accept it. The reality is that every choice involves using limited information, can have unforeseen consequences, and, because of conditions that change before your very eyes, may end up being the wrong decision anyway. Then you will have to change your mind. Yet you still can make good […]

You are often your own worst enemy. It starts with the words out of your mouth and the voices in your head. From telling yourself that you aren’t knowledgeable enough to take on a new challenge to the nagging doubts about important career moves, the negative words in your mind are obstacles to the success […]

The idea of self-talk elicits images of less-than-sane people muttering to themselves as they stumble about less-than-safe streets. I try not to look like that when I talk to myself. In theory, this means ensuring my internal monologue is actually internal when other people are about. In practice, people are always sneaking around corners and […]

People have delivered countless speeches in history. But even speeches delivered by the most prominent people, on the most auspicious occasions, routinely make little difference. Think of presidential speeches, like inaugural or State of the Union addresses. How many of them had any lasting impact? Just a few, like John F. Kennedy’s 1961 exhortation to […]

This week my team met for strategic planning. We set aside several days so the leadership team could review our values, goals, and budget. We’re just finishing up today, actually. But Day 1 was dedicated not just to leaders, but to the full team. Why? I prioritize my team. Customers are important for a business. […]

It’s popular to say the customer is always right. It’s also not true. Whether you run a business, nonprofit, or ministry, your team comes first. Get the right team, and you’re off to the races. Hire the wrong team, and you’ll likely move slowly—maybe even backwards. So what’s the trick for getting the best people […]

Last week I took my entire team on a Caribbean cruise to mark a major accomplishment. Celebrating success is something I really believe in. Family is also something I really believe in—and that’s why we included not only our employees and key contractors, but also their spouses on the trip. That meant accommodating more than […]

You can’t make it on your own, and that’s not a putdown. It’s reality. And the bigger your goals, the more help you’re going to need in reaching them. In the corporate world, I relied heavily on my executive assistants. When I struck out on my own, I thought I could manage without one. Crazy. […]

The best way to produce consistent outcomes is to employ proven patterns and practices that make them repeatable. In this guest post, J.D. Meier outlines 10 of them.