“Ask me, ‘What’s the secret of good comedy?’” “Oooohkayee, “Whaaats da secret of goooood Comedeeee?” “Not like that. Ask me like you really want to know.” “Oh all right. What’s the secret of good com-“  “TIMING!” That was one of my annoying fifteen-year-old jokes; now it’s told by annoying ten-year-olds. Evidently, in kid-comedy, the jokes […]

“Ask me, ‘What’s the secret of good comedy?’” “Oooohkayee, “Whaaats da secret of goooood Comedeeee?” “Not like that. Ask me like you really want to know.” “Oh all right. What’s the secret of good com-“  “TIMING!” That was one of my annoying fifteen-year-old jokes; now it’s told by annoying ten-year-olds. Evidently, in kid-comedy, the jokes […]

“Oh, that’s just semantics!” I tried to have a conversation with a fellow consultant once. We had just been in a first meeting with a prospective client where he interrupted when the client was answering my questions.  The consultant talked incessantly about himself, his background, and projects he had done in similar industries. “Did you […]

Let us share a remembrance for the humble penny,For it’s a fact, that early next year, we will cease to mint any.It costs four cents to make one cent. You know that makes no sense.Find a penny, save a penny, spend it on Defense.And it’s not just US Yanks; Aussies, Kiwis, and Canadians, too,Are dumping […]

“The job is no longer any fun. I feel like I have spent the last seven years atop a giant marshmallow kicking down, only to watch as it slowly moves back to its existing shape.” So said William O. Spencer, the retiring CEO of Sherwin Williams paint company of Cleveland, Ohio in 1978. I didn’t […]

“I was a consultant for thirty-seven years.” “You know, you say that a lot. Maybe mix it up a little. Y’know, I was a consultant for a very long time. . . or almost forty years or something.” This is a conversation I had several times with Billie, my editor-wife, while writing Traveling the Consulting […]

Leadership As a writer, I try to simplify, to summarize, to capture the essence of something in a phrase. I don’t always succeed, of course; I am too often wordy, loquacious, distracted and meandering. In my upcoming book, Change Leader? Who Me? I repeatedly describe the difference between  management and leadership: Managers: thrive in a […]

“Are summer jobs particularly hard to find this year?” I was sitting across from a man I came to call “Old Man Hager,” behind his back. We all thought of Mr. Hager as “really old;” he was probably sixty. He had more hair on his thick forearms than he had on his head, a wiry […]

When I first became a trainer, my kids were little, and I confess that I often used stories about them to illustrate the points I was teaching. Sometimes I even attached my children’s names to cute stories I read. I’m not necessarily proud of that, but those weren’t the worst lies I told in my […]

One morning at Heathrow “Chris wants to do something for the cabin crew.” “Sure, easy, I’ll go talk to him.” It was 1985. I was the project manager in the near final stages of the British Airways Managing People First Programme, (MPF), a one-week long, custom leadership training program for the top 1000 people at […]