Radical Candor, by Kim Scott. NY: St. Martin’s Press. 2017. 232 pages. Kim Scott starts her excellent management book by telling a story about one of her employees in the first company she owned. “Bob” was a kind, funny, caring,…

Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action, by Simon Sinek. (2009). NY: Portfolio “People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it.” Simon Sinek repeats these two phrases a dozen times or more…

First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently, by Gallup (2016). NY: Gallup Press. The first thing you should know is that this is a re-release of a bestseller from 1999. As far as I could…

John Addison demonstrates Southern charm and homespun wisdom in his memoir about his leadership of Primerica during the last decade’s economic downturn. He and his co-CEO managed to keep their financial company from melting down, unlike so many others. Instead,…

Bridging the Soft Skills Gap: How to Teach the Missing Basics to Today’s Young Talent, by Bruce Tulgan. 2015. NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Whenever I talk to colleagues about their work situations, most of those who are over…

Every day we are measured against the yardsticks of averages. The assumption that metrics comparing us to an average—like GPA, personality assessments, standardized test results, and performance review ratings—reveal something meaningful about our potential is so ingrained in our society…

Adam Steltzner, an engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, led the team that landed the Curiosity on Mars in 2012. Curiosity is a 2,000 pound, $2.5 billion, car-sized robotic rover that is exploring Gale Crater as part of NASA’s Mars…

I was initially put off by the title of this book, because I loved “Good to Great” by Jim Collins, and this seemed to be an attempt to capitalize on the popularity of Collins’ book. But, after a few pages,…

Finkelstein is one of the big names in management/leadership circles. He’s the director of Tuck’s Center for Leadership at Dartmouth College, and a consultant and speaker to senior executives around the globe. So when he speaks (or writes), it’s wise…

Are you new to your job and feeling out of your depth and overwhelmed? If so, you probably have more to offer than you realize. In a rapidly changing world, being new, naïve, and even clueless can be an asset. According to author Liz Wiseman, the willingness to learn can be more valuable than mastery, and rookie smarts is often more beneficial to an organization than veteran comfort.

Wiseman doesn’t suggest that experience is a bad thing. Nobody wants their airline pilots, or their bridge builders, or their concert pianists to be rookies. But, while experience provides a distinct advantage in a stable field, it can actually impede progress in an unstable or rapidly evolving arena.