You remember the 1970s catchphrase from Eric Segal’s Love Story, “Love means not ever having to say you’re sorry?” Well, like many catchphrases, it happens to be wrong. We’re h…
Under the surface of every team are the values driving each individual’s behavior. Rarely discussed, sometimes not even known to the individual, these values influence triggers, alliances, and ultimat…
In my last issue of “Lead in the Moment,” I showed how managing for agility necessitates steering clear of nurturing fragility.A striking example of the counterproductive approach of foste…
The Agile Challenge “Agile” is a relatively recent buzzword in the consulting world. In October 2020, McKinsey conducted a survey of over 2,000 companies to understand their efforts to bec…
Embracing Imperfection in a World of Synthetic Perfection At a gemstone fair in Munich years ago, I was on a mission to find the perfect emerald for my wife. I’d just wrapped up my pearl trade b…
Welcome to this second edition of Lead in the Moment, a weekly newsletter where I share my experience, insights, and advice for leaders in a complex, fast changing, and unpredictable world. Humans hav…
Lead in the Moment Welcome to the first edition of Lead in the Moment, a newsletter where I share my experience gained from more than thirty years of developing, coaching, and advising leaders around…
Thirty years ago, Lapin International embarked on a journey to unlock human energy and economic value for companies by helping them discover their purpose and align with it. At that time, our concept…
I invite you to think about a recent interaction when you felt inspired by an individual or group. What resonated with or shifted inside of you? What emerged, as a result? That experience is the influ…
“A nation is strong when it cares for the weak. It becomes rich when it cares for the poor. It becomes invulnerable when it cares for the vulnerable. That is what makes great nations.” Rabbi Lord Jona…
Magic is “an extraordinary power or influence seemingly from a supernatural source.” Every individual has extraordinary power seemingly from a supernatural source. We see it manifest at times of crisi…
The problem with change is, in fact, not change at all. Despite all we are told about how difficult it is to manage change, the truth is that as human-beings, we are wired for change and get bored wit…
I recently met with a division leader of a large corporation about effective Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DE&I) strategies for his group. He shared that he recently implemented DE&I metri…
What does it mean to be a leader? In the words of John Buchan, former Governor-General of Canada, “The task of leadership is not to put greatness into people, but to elicit it, for the greatness is th…
If you would indulge me, I would like to begin this post with a short exercise. It won’t take long. You will need a blank sheet of paper to write a few things down. Divide the paper lengthwise by draw…
We’ve all heard a lot about the power of forgiveness. Self-help books and coaching literature all talk about how liberating it is to forgive others as well as yourself. While this is of course true, t…
We are currently in the toughest phase of our pandemic experience. To explain what I mean, consider two different states of being: fatigue and depletion. Fatigue is when a muscle or the mind has been…
As business leaders we evaluate the past and forecast the future. We focus so much on the past and on the present, and we need to. But we take our eye off the present at our peril. How a leader shows…
Leadership is the art of influencing the thoughts, attitudes, behaviors, and choices of others. In that sense, anybody who is in sales is in a leadership role, trying to influence the thoughts, attitu…
We have an office in Tucson, Arizona where I once visited Kitt Peak. Kitt Peak is a 7000 ft mountain top campus that houses the most diverse collection of astronomical observatories on Earth. Our inst…
Is leadership something we are born with and possess innately or is it a capacity we learn and develop later on in life? To address this age-old question, we need to agree on what we mean by leadersh…
Of course I am not better than you—nor are you better than me. Comparing people’s qualities is like questioning whether Einstein is better than Mozart or whether Bill Gates is better than the Dalai La…
So many people, Ray Dalio says, often make bad decisions because they’re absolutely sure they’re right. Successful people, Dalio says—and Dalio is a super successful billionaire, hedge fund manager, t…
We’re all facing the hard reality that COVID-19 and its domino effect of hardships will be with us for a while. When the pandemic first began, despite our worries and fears, there was some novelty in…
Of the approximately 35,000 choices we make every day, many of them impact other people. Of course, it’s inevitable that over the course of a few days or weeks, we are going to mess up with these choi…
Recently I mentioned the Truth and Reconciliation Commission established in 1995 in South Africa. It was an exercise in restorative rather than retributive justice. Its purpose wasn’t to punish anyone…
“Things only get better when we get better,” said Tony Robbins on Instagram recently. Tony Robbins is correct. We tend to depersonalize the need for change and put the focus on things that have to get…
When people act up, whether it’s a child throwing a tantrum or an entire generation of people protesting, the cause is almost always a deeply felt pain that has been triggered. In acting up, however,…