In a lifetime spent coaching business leaders, I've learned a simple truth: leaders develop differently over the short-, medium- and long-term.

Specifically, I've discovered that while there are obvious leadership skills and behaviors that require months -- even years -- to develop, there are also simple, short-term actions which any...

It would be insensitive to the point of crassness to compare the current travails in the Middle East and North Africa with the daily experiences which we in the West are typically exposed to.

It would also be naive in the extreme to pretend that there are precisely zero...

Let's get something straight: passion is not a requirement for business success, and the seemingly 24/7 'passion-in-business' industry is selling you a pup.

Despite the ever-multiplying "find-your-passion" gurus and the breathless profiles of passionate leaders by never-ran-a-business-in-their-life journos, possessing passion is about as relevant to business success as possessing Steve...

Over-dependence on systems and processes is natural to a particular stage in any organization's development -- one which I call 'Treadmill.' While we've all experienced the frustrating tendrils of this kind of bureaucracy, it actually becomes highly dangerous if complexity and redundancy begin to distort reality.

Treadmill usually occurs after...

How many start-ups are too many? At a time when we desperately need new jobs, what possible downside can there be to the current extraordinary wave of interest in launching new businesses, especially in the tech industry?

Quite a lot, if experience is any guide.

One thing has become clear: in the aftermath of the recent US mid-term elections (and not just for businesses in the US), there will be no return to a period of long-term, stable, business-benign government in the foreseeable future. And as we all know, only a crazy person would try...

It's clear that we're going to see a shakeup in the administration's economic policy team before the end of the year, and there's been much talk of bringing in a successful business leader (such as Anne Mulcahy, ex-Xerox CEO) in an attempt to counter criticism that the Obama White House...

We're about to experience either a period of turgid, lackluster business growth, or an entirely new, exciting phase of corporate innovation and expansion that will be unrecognizable from anything that has preceded it. My money is on the latter.

Why do I believe that despite deep global malaise and economic...