Happy Independence Day 2021!

  I’ve been thinking about the July 4th holiday for weeks before today.  We are not back to normal after COVID-19 but getting there.  I am also glad we are almost six months removed from the painful events of January 6.  Hopefully, time and true patriotism will heal this wound. It is worth remembering that […]

Happy Thanksgiving 2020!

In doing my research for this year’s Thanksgiving email, I found this over a 100-year-old poem, The House By The Side of The Road by Sam Walter Foss (below).  I instantly felt a connection to it and felt the message within the words was very appropriate to the times we are currently in.  It has […]

Happy Thanksgiving 2019!

I am always drawn to the romantic view of the first Thanksgiving.  Not sure this is fully accurate, but the story informs, nonetheless. A group of people new to a foreign land begin to build a community completely out of nothing.  They didn’t arrive well-versed in how to do this, but instead figured it out […]

Leadership Thought #334 – We All Need to Get Our Performance Edge Back

I don’t know when the shift started to happen in my lifetime, but we have changed from a nation that gets results to one that seems to accept a lack of performance and then bemoans our lack of progress. You see evidence of this everywhere you turn: 1) structural economic issues that never get fully addressed; 2) traffic problems that never get solved; 3) infrastructure needs that are constantly put off until there is a crisis; 4) schools that turn out less than stellar results; 5) a widening gap between the wealthy and everyone else; 6) a health care system that is broken and too costly to maintain; and 7) wars that are started but never end, etc. Each group of leaders claims they are doing their best given the circumstances and/or blames their opponents for not doing their part. They then have the gall to rant on about our “exceptionalism.” It is a vicious non-productive and self-deluding cycle.