I never planned to be a teacher in the first place. I backed into it.  I went up to Tufts, with the idea of becoming a doctor. So I became pre-med and majored in... More

Power‎ sticks to founders like glue. Without it, they'd never get their initiative off the ground, no less keep it there. Yet all that power can cut back on itself.... More

I came out of nowhere. I'm somewhat of a brash New Yorker, and I was working in the "good manners" South. I'm very instinctive, extraverted, and I tend to think out loud.... More

I had only the haziest idea of who Florence Nightingale was—a Good Samaritan, I thought, tending to soldiers in some long-ago war. "The Lady with the Lamp," as she was... More

Here's an irony, a contradiction of sorts: capable people, high achievers, often fail to take care of themselves in important ways. Poor diet, lack of regular exercise,... More

Philip Smith, the head of investment banking for a global bank, sat uneasily in in a conference room, waiting for the bank's head of HR, who declined to tell him the... More

It's always interesting, if humbling, to suddenly notice what's missing in a situation that's utterly familiar to me. All the more so when that thing is totally basic and... More

It's always a problem when too much power is concentrated in the hands of the top person.  That's almost a given in start-ups run by the founder. Inevitably,... More

From behind his massive mahogany desk, polished to such a sparkling gleam it almost hurt my eyes, Sam Califon sat high in his black upholstered desk chair. A big man,... More