Mindset 3: Embrace the Mess and Enjoy the Reward

“Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves.” That’s what Cheryl Strayed concludes in her best-selling memoir, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail.  After her mother’s death, Strayed made a string of bad choices that led to a failed marriage and substance abuse. With nothing more…

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Mindset 2: Authenticity Before Action

In August, astronauts safely splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico, completing NASA’s first successful mission in partnership with a commercial space flight company, Elon Musk’s SpaceX. It was a bright spot for all of us worried about what shoe might drop next in this year of disasters. And it offered a lesson in a…

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Don’t think outside the (check box). Blow it up.

US companies spend $8 billion a year on diversity and inclusion initiatives—with squat to show for it. Consider the equivalent spending for a US company’s R&D budget: $8 billion dollars puts you in the top 20 of all corporate innovation spending. That’s equal to Ford’s annual budget, and more than Pfizer, Facebook, General Motors, and…

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Compassion and the Man in the Mirror

Over the past several months, I’ve been on a journey to explore the topic of compassion, especially reflecting on compassion as the act of alleviating another person’s suffering. (See my recent blog Turning Empathy into Action.) Like many of you, I’ve had plenty of time to think over the past 60+ days. All of this…

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