As a parent of two grown children I reflect back on some of the advice I gave to my daughters when they were growing up. One piece of wisdom that I shared was that there was a difference between book-smart and street-smart. They might love to read and achieve top...

Increase Your ROI Through Customer-Centric Engagement, with consumers using a myriad of physical and digital channels to browse and buy, marketers need to become more strategic in how they both engage digital shoppers and encourage purchase. When you add the additional layer of being bombarded with messages from competitors and...

In the wake of the Veterans Affairs wait-list scandal, the growing consensus is that VA Secretary Eric Shinseki had no other choice but to resign. Faced with irrefutable evidence of fraud on his watch, the four-star General and former Army Chief of Staff announced on May 30th that he would...

Seven years ago when my daughter was graduating high school she told my wife and me that she wanted to go to medical school one day. We had no clue at that time what obstacles she would face along the way. Katie faced many challenges over the years since that...

Simplicity is the Ultimate Sophistication, so said Leonardo Da Vinci. The world realizes this and is constantly striving to achieve it. Corporations, institutions; world bodies and even the governments – everyone is in pursuit of simplicity. This craving is driven by the premise that simplicity leads to sustainability and makes...

This year the epic film, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, celebrates 75 years since its premiere. Early in the film the powerful nature of the ruby slippers was messaged to Dorothy. Soon after arriving in Munchkinland, Glinda the Good Witch of the North teases the Wicked Witch of the West,...

The New York Times – perhaps the world’s most iconic newspaper – is good at a great many things. Leadership, it appears, just isn’t one of them. The Times continues to suffer from the fallout of a decision on May 9th by publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. to fire outspoken executive...

In business, as in sports, as in life, we are constantly faced with change. Change in the economic and financial environment, a change in momentum, a change in personnel. To paraphrase an old cliché, change is as certain as death and taxes. All of us deal with change differently, yet...

One lesson I learned while working in Washington was that in spite of how much politicians talk about the importance of developing small businesses, there is a big gap between rhetoric and reality. Small businesses (defined as businesses with fewer than 500 employees) were hurt more than anyone else by...

Bitcoin is almost certainly the most controversial currency in the world right now. You may have heard about Silk Road, the anonymous marketplace through which myriad illegal goods were sold and which was shut down by the FBI, about the recent headaches at the Mt. Gox exchange, or about concerns...