I have found that the best leaders with whom I serve find a way to make themselves simultaneously valued and dispensable. A dichotomy indeed. The […]
Category: Leadership
Sharing a Profession
Earlier this week I had the privilege of presenting at Steelcase’s Curious Minds guest speaker series. A longtime friend of mine (We served together as […]
Meaningful Differentiation
As a family and though not as leisurely as any of us would have liked, we spent the last week driving across our beautiful country. […]
Closing a Chapter
August 02, 2017, may very well go down in my memory bank as the most significant day in my career as a leader. It was […]
Responsible Friction
The health of an organization can often time be measured by the friction within. Friction is defined as (a) the rubbing of one body against another, […]
Doing Voids: Responding and Preventing
Earlier this year I wrote about outcomes a team is able to generate because of effective leaders and value a team is able to deliver despite […]
Betting on Horses
I am not a gambler, but some of my proudest moments as a leader come when I bet on the right horse. By “bet on” […]
Degrees of Gratitude
Think about the number of times you had reason to say, “You are welcome” over the last week. Would you say that it was 1 […]
Unfinished By Design
There are few things in life that are as satisfying as finishing something that you started. In my life, the two feats I am most […]
Doing the Opposite
The order of things: the way that life and the world currently are. I have been giving a great deal of thought to the order […]
Make it Personal
Over the last couple of days, I have been tracking the National Football League’s (NFL) Draft from afar. It’s not that I am fanatical about […]
Asking for Directions
Those of us who remember life before our smartphones can recall a day when we didn’t have the answers to most of our questions at […]
Environment and the Norm
Today marks my 591st day as a proud member and the Commanding Officer of Navy Cyber Defense Operations Command. When I joined this team I […]
Capturing Value
No matter our profession or our role within a team, we have a shared responsibly: deliver or create value for the customer. And whether we […]
Prioritized Success and Equitable Failure
We are taught early on in life to treat people as we want to be treated. We also have the good fortune of living in […]
Engaging “The Others”
People who are truly committed to their profession, their team, and their potential tend to have little trouble bouncing out of bed, giving their best, […]
Raising the Floor
I am a big fan of John Maxwell’s teachings. One of my favorite of the ‘laws’ of leadership he espouses is that of the ‘Law […]
The Tenured Team
I am not an academic, but I feel as though I long ago reached the point of having tenure as a Naval Officer. Generally speaking, […]
(Un)Constrained by the Past
Last week is a week I’ll remember for quite a while. I engaged the week oriented entirely on the future. It was to start with […]
Converging Paths: Doing and Being
Two weeks ago I had the privilege of being a member of a board that was charged with selecting our next crop of Commanding Officers. […]