Leadership and Self-Deception is one of the most unusual business books I’ve ever read. It’s a parable or fictional story, but that’s not what made it different. A number of business books have taken that approach in recent years. What surprised me was that I found nothing in this book about strategy, tactics, mission statements, …
Many years ago I was talking to a freelance proofreader who was several weeks late getting a project back to me. She chronicled the various issues in her life that were keeping her from completing the job. She concluded by saying, “I really want to get this done. I feel extremely guilty I am so …
When I was a new manager, and one who avoided conflict like a cliché, I had a very hard time telling people when some aspect of their performance was poor. So I’d delay and delay until the annual review, and then disgorge all the problems at once to the unsuspecting reviewee. Needless to say, the …
He was livid. I hadn’t been on the phone for thirty seconds before the president of the firm we had been working with was giving me a generous piece of his mind. I had been unresponsive and unprofessional, he said . . . and more. Much more. I was trying to get a word in, …
Today I used my 20,000th staple here at IVP. It’s taken thirty-five years to reach this milestone. But I have achieved in my career what few others ever dreamed–or ever thought worth keeping track of! How do I even know this? When I first came as a lowly assistant editor, I was issued a phone, …
My friend Steve worked as a school bus driver to help pay his way through seminary. His first year on the job was the horror story you would imagine–chaos, unruliness, insolence, anarchy. His second year on the job was a model of order, civility, respect and humanity. What made the difference?