Exceptional leaders often excel as skilled storytellers, and for good reason. Once a company hits a certain level of organizational complexity, one of the most important tasks the CEO has is to craft intellectually coherent and captivating narratives about the firm, its purpose, and its performance. Failure in this task means undermining the very existence of the company; a sin…
The Big Four consulting firms, Deloitte, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), Ernst & Young (EY), and KPMG, collectively employed more than 1.5 million people last year.Deloitte is the biggest, with $65.1 billion in global revenue in 2023 compared to PwC's $53 billion, EY's $49.4 billion, and KPMG's $36.4 billion.These firms, which lead in…
"[He/she/they] that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else." — Benjamin Franklin"The who complains about the way the ball bounces is likely to be the one who dropped it." — Lou Holtz"Wisdom stems from personal accountability. We all make mistakes; own them…learn from them. Don't throw…
To create customer loyalty and use extreme customer service as a competitive force to dominate your market, you must follow a multistep process that begins with creating a baseline of satisfactory customer service.So, let's start there.Creating a satisfied customer is straightforward and achievable. It depends on four fundamentals that have…
This as-told-to story is based on a conversation with Courtney Allen. Allen is the founder and CEO of 16x9, a global presentation design agency, and is based in Seoul, Korea. Learn how she turned her freelancing gigs on Upwork into a multimillion-dollar business.The piece has been edited for length and…
Managers are often promoted to senior roles based on their ability to fix problems. However, as enterprise leaders, they must focus less on solving problems and more on defining which problems the organization should be tackling.This means having the willingness and patience to step back and ask, "What problem are…
Delegation in your business requires you to step back, and this is a very scary thing to do. We, as entrepreneurs, also have the mentality that if we let go of our control, things will fall apart. Actually, it is the contrary. When you trust your team and give them…
I've held leadership roles at 2 fully remote companies: Square and FutureFund, the free fundraising platform for K-12 school groups that I founded.But there was a big difference between these two organizations: Square became remote during COVID-19, whereas FutureFund started out fully remote. Here's what I learned from Square's transition…
The 2024 World Series is Major League Baseball's dream come true: two franchises in the biggest TV markets featuring two of the most famous players in the game.One of those athletes is Shohei Ohtani, widely considered the best player in the league — and perhaps in the history of the…
In my own journey, I know firsthand how leadership and being an entrepreneur can sometimes feel like navigating through stormy seas, especially when I left my corporate career without a clear plan. The landscape was constantly shifting around me, and it was easy to feel overwhelmed by the unknown. But…
Parachuting onto the 50-yard line is an unusual way to arrive at a football game.As a West Point senior on the sport parachute team, I joined several classmates leaping from a helicopter and landing inside Michie Stadium with the game ball.At the academy, I got hooked on jumping out of…
In a declining economy, startups face an uphill battle when it comes to securing funding.…
With all of the recent news about artificial intelligence (AI), it got me thinking about…
A while back, I took a couple of my grandchildren on a tour of the…
Startups face numerous challenges on their journey to success, and failing to overcome any one…
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