YOUNG ADULTHOOD today is a challenging life stage. It is rife with struggles related to managing the emerging responsibilities of adult life. If ownership or management of a family enterprise is an expectation, the pressures only mount. Family enterprise ownership requires deep commitment and responsibility. To effectively step into the role, it takes a great deal of emotional maturity, interpersonal skillfulness, and an understanding of an owner’s role and responsibilities. Unmanaged expectations on the part of the present owners toward the rising generation could result in a breakdown in fa ..read more

IT ALL STARTS with perception. Everything we feel, every choice we make, and everything we do all starts with our perception of our environment. Our perceptions automatically influence our feeling, and they in turn, automatically influence our actions. Perception is powerful. Erik Van Alstine takes us through the various ways the See-Feel-Act Progression influences everything we do in Automatic Influence: New Power for Change in Work and Life. When trying to change, we need to get to the root of the problem—our perception. “Change is hard. But when we change the way we see, we strike at the ..read more

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with: I. Bob Chapman, Chairman and CEO of Barry-Wehmiller, on developing human potential: “When somebody comes into our organization and agrees to join us, when we invite them into our organization, we become stewards of that life, just as we are when a child comes into our life. A different level of intensity but the same concept. And the way we treat that person who joins our organization will profoundly affect that person’s marriage and the way that person ..read more

YOU CAN CHANGE the results your organization is getting by changing its culture. And every organization has a culture whether it is by design or by default. “Whether an organization has a world-class culture or a toxic one, its future depends on how much attention and focus it puts on growing its culture,” writes Matt Mayberry, the author of Culture is the Way: How Leaders at Every Level Build an Organization for Speed, Impact, and Excellence. Culture serves as the internal compass for an organization’s fundamental beliefs, how the organization behaves daily, and its level of market performan ..read more

BUILDING a high-performance culture is like setting the rules of a game, says Mark Miller in Culture Rules: The Leader’s Guide to Creating the Ultimate Competitive Advantage. If you don’t “play” the organization will make up their own rules which can and will have unintended consequences. Culture is “a place, physical or virtual, where you set the parameters in which people work. A place where the organization established the rules of conduct and its values, how the game will be played, the options and variables to play, the desired activities and boundaries that govern the game, and more.” I ..read more

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with: I. Ritch Eich on natural born leaders: “Too often we hear things such as ‘he (or she) is a natural-born leader.’ A person may, indeed, have the make-up, temperament, patience, and vision to lead, but without the right attitude, experience, approach, and training, that individual’s ‘knack’ for leadership doesn’t translate into real leadership.” Source: Real Leaders Don't Boss: Inspire, Motivate, and Earn Respect from Employees and Watch Your Organization ..read more

THE TERM “outward bound” was originally used to describe ships departing their home port for foreign destinations. Later, it came to be associated with a nonprofit that provides youth with adventures in nature. Now it needs a third use, for organizations. For much of the last century, the most prominent strategies of large corporations were vertical integration and diversification, pursued within their traditional boundaries, or inward bound. Vertical integration extended their chain of operations, bringing inside their boundaries suppliers at one end (“upstream”) and customers at the other ..read more

IF you’re looking to expand your thinking, then look no further than Burn the Boats: Toss Plan B Overboard and Unleash Your Full Potential by Matt Higgins. For those of us that have always heard, “Always have a Plan B,” burning the boats may sound reckless. What Higgins is saying is that “you don’t win when you give yourself the option to lose.” Should you process risk? Absolutely. Ask yourself, “What is the worst that could possibly happen?” If that is survivable, then burn the boats. To accomplish something great, you have to give yourself no escape route, no chance to turn back. You throw ..read more

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with: I. Matt Higgins on why you need to go all in: “Backup plans can make you feel safer and help you cope with uncertainty, but they also reduce the likelihood that your primary goal will ever be achieved. The mere act of contemplating a Plan B sets in motion a feedback loop that dramatically lessens the probability that Plan A will come to fruition. You spend too much of your emotional energy on contingency planning instead of on success.” Source: Burn the ..read more

THE TIME TO THINK about power is before you get it. Power is part of leadership, and it can be used in the service of others or for personal gain. In Good Power: Leading Positive Change in Our Lives, Work, and World, former Chairman and CEO of IBM Ginni Rometty redefines power as a way to “drive meaningful change in positive ways for ourselves, our organizations, and for the many, not just the few.” Using her life experiences and lessons learned, she draws out principles that define good power. She observes that power that doesn’t produce tangible results is pointless. “Power is necessary to ..read more