With the news of Margaret Thatcher’s death this week much has been said about her achievements, political savvy, and courage.
There is little we can add to the compelling, moving obituaries.
However, there is one Thatcher anecdote that I think leaders can make use of and learn from.
Paul Johnson writes a chapter on Margret Thatcher in his book, Heroes. He applauds Thatcher’s heroism and ability, but he says Thatcher had an “irritating habit of feeding you back …

Entrepreneurship need not be an activity reserved for young people. In my Inc.com column, I’ve presented four ways baby boomers can use their experience to be great (0r better) entrepreneurs. Read 4 Lessons for Mid-Life Entrepreneurs here.

Whenever speaking in front of corporate groups or to my students I’m often taken aback by the cynical sneer of the empiricist who speaks only of the bottom line and dismisses what he or she calls the “softer skills.”
Sometimes it’s hard to convey to the cynic that his or her aspiration to achieve the empirical bottom line is dependent on what they just dismissed as “soft skills.”
Leadership, in the final analysis, is about our relationship …

Perhaps the most powerful sense we have in business is our ability to see.  By observing our products in action, our customer’s habits, and our supply chain and vender’s facilities we get a huge breadth and depth of information.  Arguably, seeing how your business works provides you with the most control over how you interpret the information you are presented with.
Yet how many of us spend the majority of our days holed up in our …

Your organization’s growth will be built on a combination of attracting new customers and growing business with your existing customer base.
If you have large, corporate customers sometimes that can feel daunting. Their huge size, relative to yours, may keep you feeling vulnerable. Culturally, the big fellas do things differently. They often have highly structured rigid processes, stringent quality control requirements, and policies that seem to control what you can and cannot do. These large customers …

Program cuts, reduction in grant support, elimination of academic departments, reduction of organizational layers, centralization of administrative functions, constant changes in technology, and changes in pedagogy are just a few challenges that university and college leaders face today.
In this climate administrators and faculty members must make hard decisions on a daily basis, be aware of opportunities and risk, and be pragmatic in traversing the ever-changing terrain of higher education.
What makes it difficult to lead in …