Latest Posts

Facebook on Wall Street

Facebook Inc. goes public this moring with an initial public offering (or IPO) that will potentially raise $18 billion and give the company an estimated value of $100 billion, according to news reports. Many people throughout the world will scramble to buy shares so they can make money from the social media boom. Others will try to buy a few shares just to be part of this historic event. As I mentioned in a previous post, we are at a turning point in human history. Facebook is a significant actor in that story; not only as an innovative...

The Difference Between Two Cs

I like to challenge. Not in a competitive sense, but in an inquisitive kind of way. No idea or ideology is safe near me. The status quo should tremble when I walk by. In fact, it would if it could. Naturally, when the subject of competition in an organizational setting arises, I feel moved to ask a few questions, like: What’s the purpose of competition and how does it serve us? Is there another way to reframe the use of competition for production that companies attempt to create amongst its employees? How does competition for the sake of...

Photo of Dennis T. Jaffe courtesy of DennisJaffe.com

Rethinking Family Relationships Within the Business Context

This week, I hosted a conference call with Saybrook professor Dennis Jaffe, which led me to rethink the most muddied and, perhaps, top-of–the-totem-pole thinking: family relationships within the business context. During my conversation with Dennis this week, I had an opportunity to visit his 2009 book on family stewardship, Stewardship in Your Family Enterprise: Developing Responsible Family Leadership Across Generations. In his book, Dennis explained how the role of the wealth advisor is that of a process consultant who guides the...

Hope: Music of Kinshasa and the Cleveland National Forest

As I watched a rolling, twisting web of clouds press its way westward out of Southern California’s Imperial Valley towards where I stood in the San Diego foothills, I felt the rolling drumbeat in the thunder. It was there, just thrumming out over the Cleveland National Forest. Nearly regular in its faint booming, the thunder conjured memories of symphonic performances—powerful; towering; inspiring. As it moved closer even still, the winds evolved into strong breezes and added into the symphony the rasping growl of snares. What we...

Photo courtesy of The Center for Social Leadership

The Need for Organizational Learning is Now

In Kathia Laszlo’s May 2nd post, she spoke to the critical need to rethink and expand boundaries within a system to support different ways of working and learning together. The need to create organizational cultures where learning together is the norm has never been so important as it is during this time of increasing complexity and change. The major news story this week is JPMorgan Chase admitting big losses on egregious credit trades. The $2 billion loss was unexpected and CEO Jamie Dimon is now challenged to explain the result of the...