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Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin This column is the fifth in a five-part series on creating purposeful lives using the same business principles that guide decisions in corporate boardrooms. The target audience is you, the CEO of My Enterprise (ME) Inc. Veterinarian Mark Olcott was devastated when a simple surgical procedure on a dog resulted in its loss of life. Operating in an emergency clinic over a weekend, he did not have access to the medical files that would have alerted him to the animal’s anesthesia allergy. This led him to ask what if? What if there had been a simple technology platform that would enable record sharing among veterinarians, emergency clinics and families with pets? Mark decided to pursue a solution as his dream venture. The problem was that he had skills in animal medicine, not computer science. To turn his vision into reality, he needed help. People who take charge of their lives as CEO of ME Inc. start by looking inward …

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Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin This column is the first in a five-part series on creating purposeful lives, using the same business principles that guide decisions in corporate boardrooms. The target audience is you, the CEO of My Enterprise (ME) Inc. Great leaders ask great questions. Before they set strategy and chart a path forward, they tackle the most basic question of all: What’s my purpose? Top vote-getters on the most influential CEOs list at Ranker.com all knew the answers for their organizations. But few individuals have similar statements ready for themselves. Even executive MBA students with years of corporate experience hesitate when I introduce the concept in the classroom. To help create a personal purpose statement, we focus on framework, fallacies and formulation. Framework Many high performers feel their way through life instinctively. They have priorities, passions and philosophies that point them in a general direction. …

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Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin “I'm not a traditional academic, so I'm blissfully immune to the institutionalized thinking.” That’s a quote from Wendy York, dean of the Wilbur O. and Ann Powers College of Business at Clemson University. She was heavily recruited to this position of academic dean, even though she doesn’t have a Ph.D.—which is typically required of a dean. She served as an associate dean in Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, and then in July 2018, became dean and first female to lead business education at Clemson University. Business is actually her background: she held executive-level positions in small and large non-profit and for-profit organizations, including employment with Bechtel Power Corporation and Bank of America. She’s started and/or ran four early-stage technology and internet companies and also co-managed a venture capital fund for more than five years. Hiring someone who doesn’t have the traditional credentials for the …

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Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin We’ve lacked female voices in tech for too long. It’s time to remedy that. Our lives have gone digital. From the products we use daily to the content we consume online, tech companies are increasingly influencing the direction of humanity and creating the solutions of the future. The problem is that we have too few women working in these companies—especially in top leadership roles—which threatens to leave half the world’s population out of the conversations shaping our collective future since just 25% of STEM jobs are held by women . In addition, a UNESCO study found that globally, women comprise just over a quarter (28%) of engineering graduates. Yet, according to a report on the state of women in tech, only 11% percent of practicing engineers are women . And things seem to be trending in the wrong direction, as the World Economic Forum warns that the pandemic has put women another generation behind in …

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Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin You may have a long-term goal like writing a book, becoming a highly sought after (and highly paid) speaker, starting a successful company, or perhaps a more personal goal, like buying and apartment in Paris or retiring early. Anyone who has done any of these things will tell you that they do not happen overnight — achieving these goals, and other significant personal or professional objectives, requires playing the long game. I recently had a chance to speak with Dorie Clark, whose latest book, The Long Game: How to Be a Long-Term Thinker in a Short-Term World outlines what is required to keep our focus on these long-term goals when everyone around us is thinking in terms of weeks or months, not years or even decades. She said, “There is a reason that most people are not playing the long game. That reason is that you often look like an idiot for long periods of time because it's not paying off. And also it's often not …

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Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Before his recent death, Kent Taylor, the Texas Roadhouse restaurant chain founder, penned his hysterical, deliciously self-deprecating, and humbling autobiography in Made from Scratch . Page after page, he tells his story and summarizes each chapter with the lessons he learned from that portion of his life. Lessons he learned from critical reflection. As adults, our lives are filled with experiences that impact our lives one way or another. But how do we make sense of all of these experiences? How and when do we bother to learn from them? If you ask any adult educator, they will confirm that to truly learn, you must critically reflect on your experiences. That means you need to carefully examine the underlying assumptions and beliefs that affect how we make sense of our experiences. As Dr. Victoria Marsick, Professor of Adult Learning & Leadership, Department of Organization & Leadership, Columbia University …

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Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Despite many of the tools that became commonplace during the pandemic existing to facilitate remote work long before Covid thrust it forward as the modus operandi for workplaces around the world, remote work had struggled to gain acceptance at any kind of scale. This makes it clear that it wasn't the tools per se that were the problem, but rather the ways of working and managing that struggled to reconcile an on-premise workforce and a virtual workforce. Indeed, the most popular article of the year to date at MIT Sloan's Management Review is on the new ways of leading in this hybrid work environment. "Effective leadership in this new hybrid world requires different skills that go beyond traditional team leadership," the authors explain. Forming bonds As James Citrin and Darleen Derosa explain in Leading at a Distance, one of the main challenges experienced during the rush to virtual working has been successfully …

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Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Cornell College , a small liberal arts college located in Mount Vernon, Iowa, announced a Debt Reduction Pledge today, under which it will pay off students’ federal loan debt up to a maximum of $12,000 at the time of their graduation. The commitment will begin with 65 first-year students who enroll in Cornell for the 2022-23 academic year. There are four requirements for students to be eligible for the payoff. They must: graduate from Cornell in four years, live on campus, maintain good academic standing, and stay enrolled as a full-time student throughout the four years. Although some colleges have used private donations and Higher Education Emergency Relief Funds to cover tuition and fees that students owed them, Cornell Vice President for Enrollment Management Wendy Beckemeyer believes the scope of the new program is unique. “We want Cornell to be a difference-maker in higher education, and …

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Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Recent White House negotiations have hit a wall. Getty The partial shutdown of the U.S. government is a cautionary tale of negotiations gone wrong. From a business standpoint, there are career-shaping lessons to be learned. As a leader, you need to bring your ideas forward, even when facing a wall of opposition, and create a win-win for all involved. There are four important takeaways regarding the actions (and reactions) of the recent failed negotiations at the White House. Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi had barely sat down, when President Donald Trump stood up and left. What went wrong in the Oval office? Setting politics to the side (and I'll leave it to you to take sides): what needs to change to stop the stalemate? Against the backdrop of the partial U.S. government shutdown, here are four takeaways on what's missing—and how to communicate a win-win outcome : 1. Bring It : "Neither side came into …

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Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Normally, all leaders, even authoritarians, try to make sure that the trains run on time , or at least that the trains keep running . If government doesn’t function, or workers aren’t paid for doing their jobs, then even the leaders’ most faithful followers risk awakening from their complacency and examining their leaders’ aberrant behavior with brutal scrutiny. President Trump is now testing the outer limits of that leadership playbook by shutting down a quarter of the government—already the longest shut-down in American history—and threatening to continue it “ for months, even a year ,” if he doesn’t get $5.7 billion funding his 2000-mile wall along the Southern border. U.S. President Donald Trump Photographer: Carlos Barria/© 2018 Bloomberg Finance LP © 2018 Bloomberg Finance LP The shutdown is disrupting the lives of millions of citizens, including the mortgage industry, (which had enough political …

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