There is always more to say about strategy and leadership.  In some companies it's only something that happens in the ivory tower, while newer and smarter leaders realize it is something they need to foster in each and every employee.  Everybody needs to be a contributor, not just a performer, to have an edge over the competition.

Recently I read an article about multitasking.  In a study at Harvard Law, some of Harvard's most highly performing students were tested doing focused work and then switching to multitasking.  The results stated that the intelligence level of these brilliant people dropped to that of a 6-year old, when performing more than one task at a time.

My partner and I are remodeling an old house.  Our can of worms, we call it, sometimes lovingly, sometimes despairingly.

With the buddhist principle of "emptiness" in mind, here is the "empty" situation:  we bought a house, the previous owner was less than forthcoming with their disclosures, which accounts for that at every turn, we find more issues that have to be resolved.  The outcome:  we are over our already conservative budget, and it is taking much longer than we anticipated.

This week is my birthday.  I don't know about you, but I tend to do a lot of thinking and pondering around this time.  It's a great opportunity to look back at the last year, consider what went great and how it could have been even better.

Leadership is a big buzzword these days.  What does good leadership look like?   Leigh Buchanan compiled a list of leadership styles  in his article in Inc. magazine:

How many people do you know who take the time every day to think about how they want their day to go? What their desired outcomes are?

Maybe you just don't think of yourself as creative.  Maybe you do and you've hit a dry spell.  Maybe you do but you just can't seem to think how you could think creatively about your never ending list of action items (that's the creative term for "to-do" list).

Caution:  Building agreement with this concept (and practicing the solution) will have great impact on your relationship with your team, your spouse, your kids, your dog and cat.  Ok, maybe not the cat...

Building the business and not having it be about maximum profit...  is anathema in much of the business world.  It seems long ago when I was struggling with this concept as a budding coach, and my own amazing coach, Jeaneen Schmidt, asked me the eye opening question: "when has anything ever worked, when you made it about the money...?"  True that.

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about diamonds.  I am a jeweler from long ago so these amazing stones have been in my consciousness for a long  time.  This last week, diamonds, and more specifically, diamond cutting, has taken on a whole other meaning.

Just coming back from a 10-day trip to beautiful Hawaii, I am suffering from a thorough vacation hangover.  And it's not an overindulgence of Mai-Tais I am experiencing, it's more about the body and mind having come to rest and are not too compliant with coming back up to speed of "normal life".

The pattern I am referring to is the pattern of change.  To many, just the mentioning of "change" produces cold sweats and gooseflesh and it is helpful to know that, not matter how resistant or compliant we are with this fact of life, we tend to follow s specific pattern:

Kind of curious, since rarely there are elephants in a room, and generally they aren't pink.  How come these amazing creatures have been made the picture of something unspoken, but undeniably there?

"I am so overwhelmed." This is probably the sentence I hear from my clients most often.  Not surprising, given that I coach many leaders around work/life balance skills.  Most of the complaints center around there always being way more that needs to get done, than there is actual time in the day.

Thinking about your life, if you made a list of the things that you always said you wanted to do but never have, how long would it be?  Sit down and make that list right now.  How many items are on it, three, 5, 20 items? Look at your list again and pick out the three most important things.  If you are having a hard time prioritizing, think of it in terms of:  which of these things would have profound impact on your life?