Most everyone who met Herb Kelleher, the larger-than-life cofounder and longtime CEO of Southwest Airlines, has a story about his or her initial encounter with the man, so I’ll begin this reflection on his legacy with mine. It was the late 1980s. I was a newly minted editor at HBR, fresh out of business school, and I was attending a big, prestigious (and, to be honest, rather boring) conference on […]
Garry Ridge is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the WD-40 Company, a billion-dollar business with a 93% employee engagement index. Garry Ridge on CultureLab
I was 34 when I heard my doctor say “stage-four Hodgkin’s lymphoma.” The news hit me like a punch to the face. I was stunned. Then every two weeks for six months, I had to go the Lineberger Cancer Center to receive chemo. I had a hard time getting out of bed on those days. I loathed the nurses injecting poison into me. Once I was there, and the chemo […]
Lately, we have been hearing a lot from our clients about “toxic” coworkers and teammates. This issue isn’t new; there have been bad coworkers since the beginning of organized work. But these days, their impact feels bigger and more destructive. Businesses need teamwork to function. And teams need to be more collaborative, adaptable, and proactive than ever. The days of top-down decision making are long gone in many companies and […]
The game had ended. The applause had died down, and people had gone home. His work was done, now he could rest. So he took off his cleats and he sat down. Someone took a picture, and it went viral. Andrés Iniesta, one of the most gifted and successful soccer players of his generation, barefoot, alone, on the pitch of Camp Nou, the stadium of FC Barcelona — Barca, as […]
Fred Kofman is an author and leadership expert and has led teams at Linkedin, advised Google and conducted many workshops around the world. His newest book is The Meaning Revolution, The Power of Transcendent Leadership. He shares why serving a higher purpose at work motivates us much (much) more than any material incentives. Real Leaders Bring Meaning into the Workplace
The entrepreneur who founded and grew the largest startup in the world to $10 billion in revenue and got fired is someone you have probably never heard of. The guy who replaced him invented the idea of the modern corporation. If you want to understand the future of Tesla, and Elon Musk’s role in it — something many are keen to do, given the spate of negative headlines about the company — you […]
When neuroscientists tested expert meditators, they discovered something surprising: The effect of Buddhist meditation isn’t just momentary; it can alter deep-seated traits in our brain patterns and character. Daniel Goleman and Richard Davidson tell the story of this revolutionary breakthrough in our understanding of how meditation works. How Meditation Changes Your Brain — and Your Life
In a recent interview with Vox’s Ezra Klein, journalist and author Ta-Nehisi Coates argued that serious thinkers and writers should get off Twitter. It wasn’t a critique of the 140-character medium or even the quality of the social media discourse in the age of fake news. It was a call to get beyond the noise. For Coates, generating good ideas and quality work products requires something all too rare in modern life: quiet. […]
One of the hardest things in life is to know when to keep going and when to move on. On the one hand, perseverance and grit are key to achieving success in any field. Anyone who masters their craft will face moments of doubt and somehow find the inner resolve to keep going. If you want to build a successful business or create a great marriage or learn a new […]
