Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, recounts the best advice he ever got: have an executive coach. I’m an established CEO yet “Everyone needs a coach,” says Schmidt. The advice came from the dean of venture capital, John Doerr.
I’m an old man and I’ve known many troubles, most of which never happened.
–Attributed to Mark Twain
Randomness’s Large Role in Life
NYTimes: Psychologist Daniel Gilbert makes the argument that uncertainty – not knowing what misfortune will come – makes people more unhappy than misfortune itself. Do you find that to be true?
Leonard Mlodinow: It does seem to be true of (more…)
I use Twitter to share brief daily messages. You can have them delivered to your cell phone by text message (SMS) or view them when you visit your free Twitter web page. Create a Twitter account and “follow” TonyMayo.
Here are my recent tweets (messages):
It is a law of nature that you cannot be satisfied with something that you are “stuck” with. —Werner Erhard
“Finding what’s wrong and fixing it.” vs. “Seeing what’s possible and going (more…)
Very clever, thought-provoking, and inspiring video.
This video was created for the AARP U@50 video contest and placed second. “The contest, launched in August 2007 on YouTube, gave people between the ages of 18 and 30 the chance to submit short videos on the subject of what they expect their lives to be like at age 50. The goal of the U@50 Challenge was to encourage intergenerational dialogue enabling young people to speak their minds and give AARP insight into their views.”
A great revolution in just one single individual will help achieve a change in the destiny of a society and, further, will enable a change in the destiny of humankind.
During the Internet bubble, I assisted with a large event for entrepreneurs by working the registration desk. It was busy until a few minutes after the speech began, a How I Did It presentation by an executive at a suddenly large dotcom.
One of the organizers said, “I can handle the late arrivals. Go in to hear the talk.”
“That’s okay,” I replied. “You go.”
“Don’t you want to hear it? He’s one of the founders!”
“Why would I want to hear him? All he can tell me is what he thinks is the reason it worked, but he doesn’t actually know. He got lucky but believes he’s a genius.”
Too many successful business people do not realize that being struck by lightning doesn’t make you an expert on electricity.
We all make thousands of decisions and take millions of actions. After assessing the results as a “failure” or a “success,” we attribute the outcome either to (more…)
At Accelerent, I was lucky to meet the commander of the USS Cole and hear his story of the day his destroyer was nearly sunk by al-Qaeda. Kirk Lippold made clear that his ship was saved mostly because of how he led and trained his crew in the years prior to the attack, rather than by any dramatic decisions or heroics on October 12, 2000.
His “Five Pillars of Leadership” are:
• Vision
• Personal Responsibility and Accountability
• Trust and Invest
• Professional Competence
He gave a thrilling and informative presentation. I particularly thanked him for illustrating the masterful use of chain of command, maximizing his impact as a leader by improving his officers rather than continually reaching down to personally resolve specific issues.
The Navy, unfortunately, tends to be rather unforgiving of officers whose ships are damaged so Kirk Lippold never made Captain. The military’s loss is our gain as he tours the country sharing his leadership lessons.
I heard US Poet Laureate Charles Simic respond to the question, “What is poetry for?” He reported that the best answer he has heard came from one of his students.
Poetry reminds people of their humanity.
Coaching conversations are poetry, too.
Gave up the “Reluctant CEO” role and became more confident and comfortable in my role as CEO. More focused and more confident in running my company. Repositioned our company’s staffing plans and hired a great CFO.
-Public Company CEO
Name withheld
The winners of the Distinguished Alumni Award at a top business school were asked, “What leads to success in business–a lucky experience or a series of planned decisive steps?”
These Chicago Booth graduates:
easily agreed:
Give yourself some slack. Success involves chance as well as virtue.
Luck plays a meaningful role in everyone’s lives.
–James Simons
#1 Hedge Fund Manager
“There is quite a bit of evidence now suggesting that the more people you have contact with, in your own home or outside, the better you do” mentally and physically, Dr. Kawas said. “Interacting with people regularly, even strangers, uses easily as much brain power as doing puzzles, and it wouldn’t surprise me if this is what it’s all about.”
And bridge, she added, provides both kinds of stimulation.
“People stop playing,” said Norma Koskoff, another regular [contract bridge] player here, “and very often when they stop playing, they don’t live much longer.”
—At Bridge Table,
Clues to a Lucid Old Age
New York Times
Werner Erhard
The Transformation of a Man:
The Founding of EST
by W. W. Bartley, III
This is the only book I ever found so useful, inspiring, and compelling that, immediately upon completing it, I turned back to page one and read it again. That happened fifteen years ago. I just finished reading it a third time and got just as much benefit again.
I first encountered life coaching and executive coaching in 1992 when I participated in the Forum at Landmark Education Corporation. As for many graduates, that weekend course remains one of the most beneficial experiences in my life. I continued to participate in Landmark programs and I became curious about the man who originated the work.
Werner Erhard founded est in 1971 and “The Training” became a major cultural phenomenon of the 1970s, with hundreds of thousands of enthusiastic graduates around the world, including leading academics, for example Harvard Business School’s Michael Jensen and MIT’s Warren Bennis, and many celebrities such as John Denver, Valerie Harper, Ted Dansen, and Raul Julia. Tiger Woods’ first and most important coach, (more…)
Tony has been my CEO executive coach since 2006. I doubt anyone could truly understand the impact of working with him until they have experienced it. I get input from many sources and experts but everyone else is telling me what they would do in my place.
Tony seems to draw out from me my own best thinking and helps me see what is best for myself. I don’t get that anywhere else.
Tony is a true professional, and has a way of truly transforming my thinking to achieve positive results. It’s amazing how I can go into a conversation with him feeling overwhelmed and leave knowing that I can focus and execute on the things that will make the most impact on my business in the short- and long-term.
I highly recommend Tony to anyone with a rich life who wants to make it even better!
That meditators are better able to concentrate and have steadier, more positive emotions has long been known. Regulation of emotion and attention occurs principally in the hippocampus, thalamus, and other specific parts of the brain. New research at UCLA has revealed exceptional enlargement of these structures in the brains of meditators. This growth does not come at the expense of other mental abilities as, “There were no regions where controls had significantly larger volumes or more gray matter than meditators. … Research has confirmed the beneficial aspects of meditation. In addition to having better focus and control over their emotions, many people who meditate regularly have reduced levels of stress and bolstered immune systems.” (Science Daily)
These might be the neuronal underpinnings that give meditators’ the outstanding ability to regulate their emotions and allow for well-adjusted responses to whatever life throws their way.
Click here for blog post on how to meditate.
People are often surprised that I do not read popular business magazines, the latest management books, or eagerly attend speeches by top executives and successful entrepreneurs. I am certainly not knowledge averse; I read a great deal and love information. I am very interested in business and know a lot about it. Clients know that there is seldom an aspect of their enterprise I can not comment upon usefully. I just do not get my data from the usual sources.
I just came across an article in the California Management Review that explains one reason that reading most business journalism and executive memoirs is worse than useless. Phil Rosenzweig’s article, Misunderstanding the Nature of Company Performance: The Halo Effect and Other Business Delusions and his book shows that bad science and poor logic permeate the business press. Rosenzweig’s demolition of the over-praised Good to Great books is especially satisfying.
…it’s easy for pundits and professors to claim that someone blundered. Decisions that turned out badly are castigated as bad decisions. However, these sorts of judgments are erroneous, made retrospectively in light of what we know to have happened subsequently. These errors are surprisingly widespread in the business world. They affect not only journalistic accounts about specific companies, but also undermine the data used for large-scale studies about company performance. They lead to a broad misunderstanding of the forces that drive company success and failure. As we will see below, some of the most popular business studies in recent years are undermined by fundamental problems of data integrity.
…
strategy is about choice, and choice involves risk. There are no easy formulas to apply, no tidy plug-and-play solutions that offer a blueprint for success.
What coach has had the greatest impact on a client? The man with the strongest claim may be Earl Woods, whose famous client is his son, golfer Tiger Woods. How did Earl Woods become such a fantastic coach?
By studying, as I have, with the most important influence on executive coaching, Werner Erhard. Some of Earl Woods’s coaching wisdom is below, excerpted from the 1996 article in Sports Illustrated about Tiger being chosen Sportsman of the Year. It is all pure Werner Erhard.
“What I learned through est [created by Werner Erhard] was that by doing more for myself, I could do much more for others. Yes, be responsible, but love life, and give people the space to be in your life, and allow yourself room to give to others. That caring and sharing is what’s most important, not being responsible for everyone else.
“Which is where Tiger comes in. What I learned led me to give so much time to Tiger, and to give him the space to be himself, and not to smother him with dos and don’ts. I took out the authority aspect and turned it into (more…)
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