The firing of Joe Paterno as coach of Penn State has dominated the news this week. A legendary coach with the most wins in the history of major college football, Joe was dismissed for not doing more to stop the alleged sexual abuse of children by former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky. The news came as […]
What do you do with a high performing employee whose values don’t line up with the organization?
It’s just a fact of human nature – Not everyone has the same set of values. But what should you do if you discover that one of your high performers is a values mismatch with your organization? There are two aspects to evaluating people: One is performance and the other is citizenship—whether people are operating […]
The Power of Gratitude
I have a long-time friend named Walter Green who just wrote a book called This Is the Moment! Walter, in his 70th year, decided he would make a list of the people who really impacted his life at different stages. He had to locate some he had lost contact with, but over the year he […]
The Golden Rule is Alive and Well
I was talking recently with one of my old friends who is not a man of traditional religious faith. I asked him, “What is your comfort? What is a philosophy you live by?” And he said, “I have always tried throughout my life to do the right thing. I think of the Golden Rule as […]
Create Autonomy Through Boundaries
One of the key steps to empowering people is to create autonomy through boundaries. A problem in the past was the assumption that empowered people could do anything they wanted; they were in charge. That theory just doesn’t make sense. A river without banks is just a large puddle—what permits a river to flow is […]
Take what you do seriously, but yourself lightly
I had a wonderful time recently, playing in a charity golf tournament with coworkers Steve Murphy, Randy Conley, and Brent Bystedt. It was really a lot of fun; we played a scramble. One of the things it reminded me of—and this is so important to Colleen Barrett and Herb Kelleher at Southwest—is you really have […]
Everyone’s a Coach
In the book Everyone’s a Coach that I wrote with Don Shula, we came up with an acronym that may really help you think about how you’re doing as parents and managers and volunteers in the community. You can use this in just about any area of your life. C stands for Conviction-Driven: Do people […]