When I first started managing people I developed a reputation for being a “line of sight” manager — meaning, I tended to ask the last person I saw to do the same thing I had just told the person before them, and maybe another person or two before them. Sometimes I
I’m calling for a mentoring revolution in the age of AI. When I was working for former Cisco CEO John Chambers, his calendar would be filled with meetings with first-time CEOs. I often found myself on their calendars, as John wanted me to share Cisco best practices. It’s
“The future is already here – it’s just not very evenly distributed.“ I love science fiction, and the way it taps into our imagination about the future. No doubt, it’s my favorite storytelling genre. That’s why I appreciate these words from William Gibson of Neuromancer fame and so
Every Career Story is a Three-Act Play. In the first episode of “Breaking Bad,” we learn that the main character, Walter White, is a high school chemistry teacher with a terminal disease who takes a decisive turn to the dark side of life in order to ensure his family is
Discover 5 actionable tips every manager needs to teach in 2025. Learn how to help your team stand out in an AI-driven workplace through relationships, learning, and career development.
“What do you want to be known for — what’s YOUR brand?” For boomers, life on the corporate ladder could last 20 or 25 years, or longer. My 93-year old dad reads my Substacks, and he recently told me he spent 35 years in the same function at Bristol-Myers moving
“Directionally, I agree with you.” Seriously. If you ever doubted the power of the corporate ladder for boomers, consider the fact that people continuously moved up the ladder despite working in an era when passive-aggressive behaviors were tolerated, often encouraged, sometimes even rewarded. What I love about being a boomer
"Accounting is the language of business." When my daughter was looking at colleges, we had lunch with Larry Carter, Cisco’s retired CFO who was on the board of Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles at the time. We wanted to hear about the school, but we left with a
The boomer generation of managers had a handful of “catch phrases” that existed only because the corporate ladder existed. Any boomer manager likely used all three of these expressions at some point during career conversations with people on their teams: * “Managing your career is your responsibility.” * “You need to do
"DEVELOPING MANAGERS HAS VAPORIZED." When my friend and sales leader Tom Pridham told me this more than a year ago, he seemed to sum up the zeitgeist of managing in America. Now that the facts are in. The state of support for managers in America is appalling. Development is now
THE DREADED TRADE-OFF DECISION Not long after I left “corporate” at Cisco and moved into a sale enablement role, my new manager invited me to his office to share that a budget cut was coming. I still remember conversation: “The cut is 33,” he says. All I hear is a
"SHOW ME THE FACTS." Facts have always mattered to demonstrate results and performance. But facts matter in a different way for millennials and gen-z than they did for boomers, who could count on the corporate ladder to move their careers logically forward. For boomers, the goal was always to show