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Dilbert once said that strategic planning is hallucinating about the future and then something different happens. It’s like work but without the satisfaction of completing anything. You have meetings and talk about the company’s strategy in vague, emotional terms. And then you sit in a room with inadequate data until the illusion of knowledge is attained. Anyone who’s ever sat on a board of directors can relate to this…

Like the kid from the horror movie who saw dead people, I see friendly people. They’re everywhere. And the really spooky part is, my body warns me right before it happens. One millisecond before some stranger sees my nametag and says hello, there will be a twinge in my stomach. It’s the strangest thing. Like having my own spidey sense, except instead of an extraordinary intuitive ability to sense…

Regret is a normal emotional response to missed opportunity. We risk it every time we make a decision. And nobody is immune to it. Even the most conscious among us know that to admit our regret is to understand we are fallible and human. But there’s a fine line between honoring our humanity and prosecuting ourselves for crimes past. If our regret about yesterday’s decisions and actions helps us…

Boundaries are deliberate limits that protect what we care about. And what’s empowering about setting them is, they not only keep us safe, but they can also spur another person’s growth. Years ago, my application for membership in an exclusive leadership group was approved and moved forward to the group interview stage. Which meant sitting in a chair facing twelve strangers who apparent job was to intimidate and challenge…

Reality is not interested in our opinions, objections or agendas. It is the one thing that’s ever renewing and ever progressing from one state of completion to another, with or without our consent. Question is, how do we forgive reality for being what it is? When things go south, how do we keep ourselves from punching holes in walls and hurling heavy objects across the room? There are two…

My friend belongs to a church who has used nametags for fifteen years. In fact, their congregation has grown to a few thousand members, which is no small feat. The challenge is, several of the new hires to the church staff have opposing views about nametags. They out rightly refuse to wear them. Either because they feel silly, the badges clash with their wardrobe, they don’t like the attention,…

There’s an idealistic part of me that weeps for the future of the world. Because if we take a good look around, there are all these profound, pervasive, urgent and expensive problems that are not going away anytime soon. Somebody should definitely do something. But then there’s the pragmatic part of me that wonders if obsessing about and trying to create a solution for the world’s biggest problems isn’t…

Health is the force multiplier of all of our other attributes. It’s the catalyst that drives us to fulfill our potential, the fuel that enables us to engage the rest of ourselves and the constructive force that propels our life forward. And if we’re willing to take care of ourselves without guilt or blame or justification, then the daily momentum of all those healthy actions will build the foundation…

According to the rules of quantum mechanics, any given particle’s behavior changes depending on whether there is an observer. Researchers clinically proved that reality does not exist if we are not looking at it. Now, this marvel of nature primarily applies to the atomic scale. But as a thought experiment, let’s consider the interpersonal application of this idea. What if being seen is precisely what brings people into existence?…

Wearing nametags in foreign countries is an exciting experience. Having traveled around the world to a plethora of cities, it never ceases to amaze me just how easily and quickly a nametag builds bridges to people who don’t speak my language. Forgive my grandiosity, but the sticker always seems to be this icon of peace, gesture of hospitality and a translator in the global dialect of humanity. Because everybody…