Of Mice and Turkeys
Imagine for a moment that you’re sitting down to your Thanksgiving dinner when suddenly the roof of your house swings back and you find yourself looking up into something huge and incomprehensible: the eye of a hurricane perhaps, which I suspect is a lot less comprehensible close up than it is on TV. I was unexpectedly encouraged to think about this today when I went out this morning to start smoking the Thanksgiving turkey. I flipped open the top of my grill and what should I find inside but a mouse nest. Needless to say, the mice were not at all thrilled at having the roof of their house flipped up, but I’m guessing that these mice thought they were getting a pretty

Succeeding by Imagining Success
I was interviewed recently on Youth Sport Psychology Radio on how to succeed by imaging success. You can listen to it here: http://www.youthsportspsychology.com/podcast/youth_sports_radio_podcast64_stephen2.mp3 “We need to take our time and carefully evaluate the situation.” “We don’t have a lot of time and we need to move forward.” Both of these statements were made about the same project by different sets of people. The first was made by a representative of a large company, the second by a representative of a much smaller company with which the larger company was working. The folks from the large company wanted to plan everything out to

Stalking the Elusive Leader
We like to think of ourselves as highly rational beings, but the fact is we’re just not that good at being rational.The recent Star Trek movie demonstrated the normally imperturbable Mr. Spock making foolish decisions based on emotional reactions. Later in the movie, Spock’s reasoned, logical approach is less than sufficient to rally the crew. Certainly they follow him, because he is the legitimate commander at that moment — but they are not excited. When Kirk takes command, however, it is another story. Kirk engages them on an emotional level, a level deeper and considerably more powerful than logic. I hear all the time about how there is no room for emotions in the workpla

Boiling the Frog
There is an old and hoary claim that if you put a frog in boiling water, it will immediately jump out, but if you put it in cold water and slowly increase the temperature, the frog will sit there until it cooks. In fact, this happens only if the frog is equipped with little frog cement galoshes rendering it unable to jump: frogs are too smart to be boiled alive. They leave long before the water gets hot enough to cook them. Why, then, does this story have such longevity? Read the rest at the CEO Refresher.

Light’s Better Here
There’s an old joke about a man searching in the gutter under a streetlight. A passerby asks him what he’s doing. “Looking for my car keys,” replies the man. “Where did you drop them?” asks the passerby. “Over there,” says the man, pointing into the inky darkness down the street. “Then why aren’t you looking there?” responds the passerby in amazement. “The light’s better here.” Although ludicrous, like many jokes its humor comes, as it were, from the light it sheds on an important aspect of human behavior. Given the choice betwe